UNIVERSITY 
AT  LOS 

OF  CALIFORNIA 
ANGELES 

J 


of  CAL1FOJ&NAA 

AT 

LOS  ANGELES 
LIBRARY 


3087 


8  ' 


FRANCIS  MARION  CRAWFORD 


SOME    AMERICAN 
STORY  TELLERS 


BY 
FREDERIC  TABER  COOPER 

^2L  3  2  3  O 


NEW  YORK 

HENRY   HOLT   AND    COMPANY 
1911 


COPYRIGHT,  1911, 

BY 
HENRY  HOLT  AND  COMPANY 


Published  October,  191 1 


THE    QUINN    *    TCOEN    CO.  PRESS 
HAHWAY,    N.   J. 


To  the 

STORY  TELLERS  OF  AMERICA 

Both  Those  Whom  the  Author  Has  Been 

Privileged  to  Know  Personally  and  Those  Whom  He 

Has  Met  Only  Through  the  Medium  of  the  Printed  Page, 

THE  PRESENT  VOLUME 

is  Herewith  Dedicated  in 

Grateful  Recognition  of  Many 

Pleasant  Hours 


C 


PREFACE 

THE  term  "  Story  Tellers  "  has  been  deliber 
ately  chosen  for  this  volume  in  place  of  "  Novel 
ists,"  or  "  Story  Writers,"  or  any  other  available 
variant,  because  it  makes  possible  a  more  uniform 
manner  of  treatment  and  a  more  generous  point 
of  view.  While  it  is  true  that  the  modern  novel 
in  its  higher  development  has  come  to  mean  some 
thing  more  important  than  a  mere  story,  a  source 
of  amusement  for  an  idle  hour;  still  the  fact  re 
mains  that  in  all  classes  and  grades  of  fiction  the 
underlying  story  is  the  one  common  factor,  the 
one  indispensable  element,  without  which  the  most 
carefully  written  novel  becomes  a  mere  dry-as- 
dust  essay  or  sermon. 

Now,  the  ability  to  tell  a  story  is  precisely  the 
one  gift  that  cannot  be  taught.  The  late  Frank 
Norris  once  wrote  that  in  every  child  a  story  teller 
was  born,  but  that  the  vast  majority  died  soon 
after  birth.  This,  of  course,  is  only  a  figurative 
way  of  saying  that  the  imaginative  faculty  is  a 
prerogative  of  childhood;  that  successful  story 
telling,  where  it  survives  to  mature  years,  is  an 
intuitive,  inborn  quality  not  to  be  acquired  by  any 

v 


vi  PREFACE 

amount  of  conscious  cerebration.  The  subjects 
of  the  essays  included  in  this  volume  differ  widely 
in  aim  and  in  accomplishment;  but  all  of  them 
possess,  to  a  considerable  extent,  the  gift  that 
makes  them  next  of  kin  to  the  minstrel  and  trouba 
dour,  to  the  ancient  fabulist,  and  to  the  forgotten 
spinner  of  the  world's  first  nursery  tales, — the 
gift  of  holding  the  attention  by  the  spell  of  the 
spoken  word. 

Indiscriminate  praise  is,  of  course,  as  foolish 
and  as  harmful  as  wholesale  censure.  Yet  it  is 
more  helpful  to  discover  some  merit  lurking  in  an 
otherwise  mediocre  volume,  than  to  dismiss  it  con 
temptuously  because  its  shortcomings  are  all  upon 
the  surface.  Some  very  large  oysters  contain 
some  very  small  pearls;  but  that  is  no  reason  for 
disdainfully  tossing  the  oysters  aside,  with  the  re 
mark  :  "  Those  pearls  are  not  worth  the  trouble  of 
saving ;  see  the  amount  of  waste  shell  there  is ! " 
Now,  all  of  the  authors  herein  treated  contain 
pearls,  some  large  and  some  small ;  and  the  attempt 
has  been  made  in  each  case  to  find  and  indicate 
them.  The  intention  has  been,  not  to  ignore  or 
gloss  over  any  faults,  but  first  of  all  to  lay  the 
main  emphasis  upon  the  positive  merits ;  to  show  a 
sympathetic  understanding  of  what  each  author 
has  tried  to  do,  and  to  give  full  credit  wherever 
they  have  succeeded  in  their  attempt.  And  the 
highest  and  best  reward  that  has  yet  come  or  that 


PREFACE  vii 

can  come  is  in  those  cases  where  the  subjects  of 
these  essays  voluntarily  say :  "  You  have  under 
stood." 

A  few  essays  are  here  printed  for  the  first  time ; 
others  have  been  extensively  rewritten,  in  order 
to  bring  them  up  to  date.  But  the  majority,  in 
one  form  or  another,  appeared  originally  in  the 
pages  of  the  Bookman;  and  the  author  wishes  to 
express  his  appreciation  of  the  courtesy  of  the 
editor  and  publishers  of  that  magazine,  in  allow 
ing  them  to  be  reprinted. 

FREDERIC  TABER  COOPER. 

NEW  YORK  CITY, 

June  26,  1911. 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER 

I.  FEANCIS  MARION  CRAWFORD 

II.  KATE  DOUGLAS  WIGGIN    . 

III.  WINSTON   CHURCHILL 

IV.  ROBERT  W.   CHAMBERS    . 
V.  ELLEN   GLASGOW 

VI.  DAVID  GRAHAM  PHILLIPS 

VII.  ROBERT   HERRICK    . 

VIII.  EDITH  WHARTON 

IX.  NEWTON  BOOTH  TARKINGTON 

X.  «  O.  HENRY 

XL  GERTRUDE    ATHERTON 

XII.  OWEN   WISTER 

XIII.  FRANK   NORRIS 

XIV.  AMBROSE  BIERCE 
BIBLIOGRAPHY      .... 
INDEX 


PORTRAITS 

FRANCIS  MARION  CRAWFORD  .          .       Frontispiece 

PAGE 

KATE  DOUGLAS  WIGGIN  .  .  .  .27 
WINSTON  CHURCHILL,  .  .  .  .  .48 
ROBERT  W.  CHAMBERS  .  .  .  .68 
ELLEN  GLASGOW  .  .  .  .  .90 

DAVID  GRAHAM  PHILLIPS  .  .  .  .112 
ROBERT  HERRICK  .....  140 

EDITH  WHARTON  .....  168 

NEWTON  BOOTH  TARKINGTON         .          .          .  196 

"  0.  HENRY  " 225 

GERTRUDE  ATHERTON  .....  245 
OWEN  WISTER  ......  265 

FRANK  NORRIS 295 

AMBROSE  BIERCE  .  331 


•  / 
FRANCIS  MARION  CRAWFORD 


THERE  is  a  peculiar  satisfaction  in  undertaking 
a  critical  study  of  Mr.  Marion  Crawford  in  a 
volume  which  by  its  very  title  avows  the  inten 
tion  of  viewing  the  novelist  primarily  in  his 
capacity  of  story  teller.  While  it  is  quite  true 
that  an  interesting  plot  is  the  indispensable 
corner-stone  of  successful  fiction,  yet  many  of 
the  biggest  novels  are  not  those  in  which  the 
story  teller's  art  has  reached  its  highest  develop 
ment — they  are  big  because  they  are  not  only 
stories,  but  a  great  deal  else  besides:  fearless 
paintings  of  existing  conditions ;  trenchant  criti 
cisms  of  life.  And  conversely,  many  a  novel 
faulty  in  structure,  false  in  coloring,  exagger 
ated  in  action  to  the  point  of  melodrama,  has 
been  vitalized  by  that  magic  instinct  of  the  born 
story  teller,  that  inimitable  gift  of  making  mir 
acles  seem  plausible,  and  convincing  you  that 
impossibilities  could  have  happened,  simply  by 
telling  you  with  assured  audacity  that  they 
really  did  happen.  Consequently,  to  approach 
a  novelist  primarily  on  the  story-telling  side  is 
neither  a  direct  road  to  discovering  his  perma- 


2         FRANCIS  MARION  CRAWFORD 

nent  place  in  fiction  nor  a  barrier  to  such  dis 
covery.  It  simply  determines  the  initial  point  of 
view,  avoids  the  trouble  of  many  explanations 
and  saving  clauses,  and  often  makes  possible  a 
greater  indulgence  for  shortcomings,  a  more 
cordial  recognition  of  merit.  In  the  case  of  Mr. 
Crawford  the  advantages  of  this  standpoint  are 
sufficiently  obvious.  Whatever  position  may  be 
assigned  to  him  now  or  hereafter  in  English  let 
ters,  it  must  be  conceded  that  he  was  first,  last 
and  always  a  prince  of  story  tellers,  whose  title 
was  inborn  and  not  acquired.  A  little  more  than 
a  quarter  of  a  century  ago,  when  Mr.  Isaacs 
caught  the  attention  of  a  volatile  reading  public, 
there  were  those  who  predicted,  in  view  of  its 
oddity  of  theme  and  treatment,  that  the  newly 
discovered  author  would  never  again  repeat  his 
initial  success,  that  Mr.  Crawford  would  remain 
in  the  class  of  authors  of  one  book.  Yet  any 
one  with  a  well-developed  critical  sense  must 
have  seen  in  Mr.  Isaacs,  beneath  its  Oriental 
coloring  and  its  mystical  atmosphere,  the  first 
flowing  of  that  strong,  steady,  inexhaustible 
current  of  narration  which  has  held  its  even  way 
through  upward  of  twoscore  volumes,  not  one  of 
which  deserves  the  stigma  of  mediocrity,  while 
just  a  few  possess  a  quality  entitling  them  to  a 
higher  recognition  than  they  have  yet  received. 
There  is  yet  another  reason  for  preferring  to 


FRANCIS  MARION  CRAWFORD         3 

treat  of  Mr.  Crawford  primarily  as  a  story 
teller:  namely,  that  it  is  the  point  of  view  from 
which  he  himself  would  have  chosen  to  be  treated. 
The  first  axiom  of  all  impartial  and  helpful  criti 
cism  is  that  an  author's  work  should  be  judged 
in  the  light  of  what  he  has  intended  to  do.  Most 
novelists  of  real  importance  have  sooner  or  later 
expressed  in  print  their  theories  of  the  art  they 
practised,  but  few  have  done  so  with  the  terse 
clearness,  the  uncompromising  conviction  that 
characterize  Mr.  Crawford's  suggestive  little 
monograph  upon  The  Novel — What  It  Is.  To 
the  critic  it  is  a  most  helpful  little  volume,  not 
for  a  better  understanding  of  what  constitutes  a 
novel — since  there  are  a  score  of  points  on  which 
one  is  inclined  to  take  issue  with  the  author — but 
for  a  better  understanding  of  Mr.  Crawford  him 
self.  Indeed,  it  is  scarcely  too  much  to  say  that  it 
is  a  convenient  key  to  every  one  of  his  merits  and 
defects.  And  for  that  reason  it  seems  wise  to 
examine  it  somewhat  carefully,  to  quote  from  it 
rather  freely,  and  to  get  quite  clearly  before  us 
just  what  are  his  theories  of  fiction  and  why 
those  theories  do  not  always  bear  the  fruit  which 
he  expected  to  obtain  from  them. 

In  the  first  place,  then,  the  novel  is  defined  by 
Mr.  Crawford  as  a  "  marketable  commodity,"  of 
the  class  collectively  termed  "  intellectual  artis 
tic  luxuries."  In  other  words,  the  first  object 


4         FRANCIS  MARION  CRAWFORD 

of  the  novel  is  "  to  amuse  and  interest  the 
reader,"  and  a  novelist  is  at  all  times  under 
an  implied  contract  with  the  prospective  purchas 
ers  to  give  them  the  entertainment  they  are  looking 
for  and  to  attempt  nothing  more  serious  than  en 
tertainment.  It  is  not  surprising,  therefore,  that 
he  has  no  tolerance  whatever  for  the  purpose 
novel,  not  merely  because  "  in  art  of  all  kinds 
the  moral  lesson  is  a  mistake,"  but  for  the  more 
specific  reason  that  the  purpose  novel  is  "  a  sim 
ple  fraud,  ...  an  odious  attempt  to  lecture 
people  who  hate  lectures,  to  preach  at  people 
who  prefer  their  own  church,  and  to  teach  people 
who  think  they  know  enough  already."  The 
novel  is  nothing  more  nor  less  than  "  a  pocket 
theater,"  the  novelist  nothing  more  than  a 
"  public  amuser." 

It  is  good  to  make  people  laugh  ;  it  is  sometimes 
salutary  to  make  them  shed  tears  ;  it  is  best  of  all  to 
make  our  readers  think — not  too  serious  thoughts,  nor 
such  as  require  an  intimate  knowledge  of  science  and 
philosophy  to  be  called  thoughts  at  all — but  to  think, 
and,  thinking,  to  see  before  them  characters  whom 
they  might  really  like  to  resemble,  acting  in  scenes  in 
which  they  themselves  would  like  to  take  part. 

Mr.  Crawford  need  not  have  added  to  the 
above  paragraph  a  single  word  regarding  his 
attitude  toward  romance  and  realism;  for  it  is« 


FRANCIS  MARION  CRAWFORD          5 

obvious  that  the  novelist  who  recognizes  that  his 
chief  duty  is  to  entertain,  and  who  deliberately 
purposes  to  leave  out  of  his  books  all  characters 
whom  his  readers  would  not  like  to  resemble  and 
all  scenes  in  which  his  readers  would  not  care 
to  play  a  part,  must  of  necessity  have  scant 
sympathy  for  the  realistic  school,  or  small  use 
for  the  definition  of  the  novel  as  "  a  cross-section 
of  life."  What  he  does  have  to  say  upon  this 
subject  is  exactly  in  accord  with  what  one  would 
expect  him  to  say.  Zola  he  concedes  somewhat 
reluctantly  to  have  been  a  great  man,  "  mightily 
coarse  to  no  purpose,  but  great,  nevertheless,  a 
Nero  of  fiction."  But  "  Zola's  shadow,  seen 
through  the  veil  of  the  English  realistic  novel, 
is  a  monstrosity  not  to  be  tolerated."  The  fact 
that  "  in  our  Anglo-Saxon  system  the  young  girl 
is  everywhere  "  seems  to  him  in  itself  a  sufficient 
reason  why  we  should  "  temper  the  wind  of 
our  realism  to  the  sensitive  innocence  of  the 
ubiquitous  shorn  lamb."  And  after  defining  the 
realistic  school  as  that  which  "  purposes  to  show 
men  what  they  are,"  and  the  romantic  school 
as  the  one  which  "  tries  to  show  men  what  they 
should  be,"  he  frankly  declares  that  for  his  part 
he  believes  that  "  more  good  can  be  done  by 
showing  men  what  they  may  be,  ought  to  be,  or 
can  be  than  by  describing  their  greatest  weak 
nesses  with  the  highest  art." 


6         FRANCIS  MARION  CRAWFORD 

There  is  just  one  more  paragraph  which  de 
serves  to  be  emphasized,  because  it  touches  quite 
unconsciously  upon  the  source  of  the  real  weak 
ness  not  only  of  Mr.  Crawford's  novels,  but  of 
the  romantic  school  as  a  whole: 

Practically,  what  we  call  a  romantic  life  is  one  full 
of  romantic  incidents  which  come  unsought,  as  the 
natural  consequence  and  result  of  a  man's  or  a  woman's 
character.  It  is  therefore  necessarily  an  exceptional 
life,  and  as  such  should  have  an  exceptional  interest  for 
the  majority. 

Now  there  cannot  be  any  question  that  the 
theory  contained  in  this  paragraph  is  admirable; 
the  trouble  is  that  as  a  working  formula  it  al 
most  never  succeeds.  Even  in  Mr.  Crawford's 
own  novels,  admirable  as  they  are — for  he  under 
stands  beyond  question  the  technique  of  his 
craft — it  would  puzzle  the  critic  to  point  out 
any  one  romantic  life  made  up  solely  of  inci 
dents  which  have  "  come  unsought,  as  the  natural 
consequence  and  result  of  the  man's  character." 
The  hidden  flaw  in  all  romantic  fiction  is  due  to 
the  fact  that  the  incidents  which  come  unsought, 
as  the  result  of  character,  rarely  show  the  ro 
mantic  quality  which  a  Scott,  a  Dumas,  a 
Stevenson  demands.  The  novelist  may  take  the 
greatest  pains  in  his  selection  of  exceptional 
types  of  men  and  women,  and  may  show  equal 


FRANCIS  MARION  CRAWFORD         7 

care  in  bringing  them  together  under  exceptional 
conditions ;  nevertheless,  in  nine  cases  out  of  ten, 
if  he  leaves  them  alone  to  follow  consistently 
their  natural  bent;  if  he  does  not  actively  inter 
vene  and  force  them  to  say  "  no  "  or  to  say 
"  yes  " ;  if  he  does  not  check  and  harass  and  com 
plicate  their  actions  by  the  intervention  of  blind, 
illogical  fate  in  the  shape  of  disaster,  disease  and 
death,  he  will  find  them  naturally  and  quietly  do 
ing  the  normal  and  obvious  thing,  and  frustrating 
his  hope  of  providing  that  exceptional  interest 
which  is  demanded  by  the  majority.  In  Mr. 
Isaacs,  perhaps  quite  as  consistently  as  in  any  of 
his  later  books,  Mr.  Crawford  evolved  a  long  series 
of  highly  romantic  happenings  directly  from  the 
peculiar  temperament  of  his  hero;  yet  take  away 
the  element  of  chance — the  accidental  blow  on  the 
head  received  by  Isaacs  in  the  game  of  polo,  the 
coincidence  which  made  Miss  Westonhaugh's 
brother  the  unknown  benefactor  of  Isaacs  in  his 
days  of  poverty,  and  finally  the  girl's  illness  and 
death  from  jungle  fever — and  the  story  would 
necessarily  have  had  a  radically  different  and  more 
prosaic  ending.  In  Saracinesca  and  Sant'  Ilario, 
the  most  admirably  real  of  all  Mr.  Crawford's 
Italian  stories,  the  fact  remains  that  the  vital 
issues  of  the  plot  arise,  in  the  one  case,  out  of 
a  purely  chance  identity  of  names  between  two 
distant  cousins,  and  in  the  other,  from  an  almost 


8         FRANCIS  MARION  CRAWFORD 

incredible  series  of  coincidences — a  lost  pin,  a 
stolen  envelope,  a  forged  letter.  Now,  in  romantic 
fiction  there  is  no  logical  objection  to  the  use  of 
chance,  accident,  fate,  call  it  what  you  will.  The 
mistake  lies  in  trying  to  write  romance  in  accord 
ance  with  a  realistic  formula,  and  to  convince  the 
reader  that  sane  men  and  women  did  strange,  un 
likely  deeds  as  the  direct  result  of  their  own 
characters. 

Mr.  Crawford,  however,  in  a  measure  disarms 
criticism  by  confessing  genially  that  he  is  him 
self  "  the  last  of  literary  sinners."  His  creed,  so 
far  as  he  has  one,  slips  on  and  off  easily,  like 
a  well-worn  glove.  In  theory,  as  we  have  seen, 
he  advocates  romance;  in  practice  he  is  in  turn 
realist,  psychologue,  mystic,  whatever  for  the 
moment  suits  his  need  or  appeals  to  his  instinct 
of  born  story  teller.  His  stage-setting,  his  local 
color  are  painted  in  from  life  with  scrupulous  fi 
delity  ;  a  Balzac  or  a  Zola  could  not  be  more  faith 
ful  to  reality  in  matters  of  topography.  You 
may  at  any  time,  if  you  please,  trace  the  peregri 
nations  of  Count  Skariatine  through  the  back  al 
leys  of  Munich,  or  of  Paul  Patoff  through  the  laby 
rinthine  paths  of  Constantinople.  And  his  people 
are  as  real  as  his  streets  and  houses.  The  whole 
world  knows  that  his  Mr.  Isaacs  was  drawn  direct 
from  life,  the  original  being  a  certain  Mr.  Jacobs, 
a  trader  in  rare  jewels,  who  later  came  into  note 


FRANCIS  MARION  CRAWFORD          9 

through  his  dispute  with  the  Nizam  of  Deccan  over 
the  price  of  the  Great  Empress  diamond.  Had 
you  talked  with  Mr.  Crawford  about  his  other 
characters,  you  would  have  learned  that  there  was 
nothing  exceptional  in  the  case  of  Mr.  Isaacs.  He 
would  have  told  you  with  a  quiet  smile  that  the 
men  and  women  who  thronged  the  pages  of  his 
Saracinesca  trilogy  were  all  real  people,  whom  he 
had  for  the  most  part  known  and  liked  well;  that 
Corona  was  still  living;  that  Spica  was  a  com 
posite  portrait  of  a  cadaverous  Pole  and  a  famous 
Neapolitan  duelist,  who  died  a  few  years  ago ; 
that  Count  Skariatine,  the  crazed  nobleman  in  A 
Cigarette  Maker's  Romance,  was  in  reality  a  Ger 
man  count,  who  once  a  week,  just  as  in  the  story, 
left  his  work-bench  in  the  little  tobacco  shop  and 
sat  at  home  waiting  in  vain  for  a  summons  to  the 
Bavarian  Court;  that  Vjera,  the  Russian  girl  who 
sold  her  hair  to  pay  the  count's  debt  of  honor, 
was  also  a  reality ;  and  that  even  Fischlowitz's 
dingy  tobacco  shop,  with  the  absurd  mechanical 
figure  of  a  Viennese  Gigerl  in  the  window,  existed 
in  Munich  exactly  as  Mr.  Crawford  drew  it,  and 
was  in  fact  the  shop  where  he  went  day  after  day 
to  buy  his  cigarettes. 

His  method,  then,  may  be  summed  up  somewhat    S 
after  this   fashion:   he   begins   by   taking   a   real 
stage-setting,   some  one  of  the  many   corners   of 
the  world  of  which  his  cosmopolitan  experience  has 


10       FRANCIS  MARION  CRAWFORD 

given  him  intimate  knowledge ;  he  brings  upon  the 
stage  a  group  of  real  people  of  strong  and  inter 
esting  personality,  whom  he  has  known  and  studied 
from  the  life,  idealizing  them  to  suit  his  purpose, 
yet  not  so  much  as  to  mar  the  illusion  of  reality. 
And  having  up  to  this  point  held  himself  in  check, 
he  now  gives  free  rein  to  his  imagination,  and  puts 
these  thoroughly  real  people  through  a  series  of 
highly  romantic  adventures,  forcing  them  to  think 
and  say  and  do  many  things  which  our  sober  sec 
ond  judgment  tells  us  they  never  would  have  said 
or  thought  or  done — and  yet,  with  his  inborn 
power  of  story  telling,  convincing  us  for  the  time 
being  that  it  all  must  have  happened  exactly  as 
he  assures  us  that  it  did. 

'i  It  would  be  futile  to  attempt  to  survey  in  detail 
any  large  number  of  Mr.  Crawford's  twoscore 
novels,  nor  would  any  very  useful  purpose  be 
served  were  it  practical  to  do  so.  There  is  a 
surprisingly  large  proportion  of  his  books  which 
a  critic  may  quite  safely  ignore — books  which  one 
and  all  maintain  an  even  quality  of  interest,  yet 
add  nothing  to  our  estimate  of  him  as  man  or 
artist.  As  is  well-nigh  inevitable  in  a  novelist  who 
never  allows  himself  to  forget  that  "  novel  writing 
is  a  business,"  and  who  has  brought  the  technique 
of  construction  almost  to  a  mechanical  routine, 
the  difference  between  his  earlier  and  later  books 
is  mainly  a  loss  of  spontaneity  and  an  increased 


FRANCIS  MARION  CRAWFORD       11 

conventionality  in  plot  and  character.  Mr.  Craw 
ford  did  not  "  write  himself  out,"  to  use  the  phrase 
which  he  declared  was  so  terrible  for  any  author 
to  hear.  His  average  standard  during  his  closing 
years  was  far  nearer  to  that  of  his  best  work  than 
that  of  Mr.  Howells,  let  us  say,  comes  to  Silas 
Lapham — nearer,  indeed,  than  many  another  nov 
elist  whom  the  world  has  chosen  to  honor  could 
come  to  his  own  best  achievement  after  a  quarter 
of  a  century  of  unremittent  toil.  It  is  neverthe 
less  a  fact  that  the  volumes  which  one  feels  in 
clined  to  single  out  for  specific  discussion  all  be 
long  to  the  first  decade  of  Mr.  Crawford's  literary 
activity. 

Mr.  Isaacs  of  course  must  remain  one  of  the  vol 
umes  which  will  be  read  as  long  as  Mr.  Crawford 
continues  to  be  remembered.  Crude  though  it  may 
be  in  construction,  and  uneven  in  style,  it  never 
theless  remains  a  rather  remarkable  achievement, 
one  of  those  rare  first  efforts  that  are  nothing 
short  of  a  sheer  stroke  of  genius.  It  is  usually  an 
unwise  experiment  to  read  over  in  maturity  a  story 
which  gave  keen  pleasure  in  early  youth ;  yet  if 
the  present  writer  may  be  allowed  to  cite  his  own 
personal  experience,  Mr.  Isaacs  is  one  of  the  books 
that  stand  the  test  surprisingly  well.  Mr.  Craw 
ford  himself  admitted  that  he  was  most  fortunate 
in  having  begun  his  literary  career  with  this  par 
ticular  book;  theosophy  was  in  the  air,  Kipling 


12       FRANCIS  MARION  CRAWFORD 

had  not  yet  pre-empted  the  field  of  India  for  fic 
tion,  and  there  was,  moreover,  a  certain  mingling 
of  poetry  and  cynicism,  of  mature  experience  and 
youthful  enthusiasm,  that  went  well  with  the 
strange  theme  and  the  vivid  coloring.  And  one 
may  seriously  question  whether  any  single  volume 
written  by  Marion  Crawford  in  the  height  of  his 
powers  could  have  duplicated  the  success  of  Mr. 
Isaacs  if  put  forth  as  the  first  novel  of  an  un 
known  author. 

Dr.  Claudius,  which  followed  Mr.  Isaacs  within 
the  year,  may  well  be  passed  over  with  the  com 
ment  that  for  a  book  so  badly  handicapped  the 
wonder  was  that  it  succeeded  at  all.  As  has  very 
truly  been  said,  "  a  learned  Heidelberg  Ph.D., 
however  sentimental  and  yellow-bearded,  is  a  less 
attractive  conception  than  a  youthful  and  pure- 
blooded  Iranian  adventurer,  whose  glowing  eyes 
outshine  his  jewels."  Yet  but  for  the  caprice 
of  fate  it  might  have  been  known  to  the  world  as 
Mr.  Crawford's  first  book,  for  it  had  been  in  the 
hands  of  the  publishers  many  months  before  Mr. 
Isaacs  was  issued.  Of  the  books  which  followed, 
at  an  average  rate  of  two  volumes  a  year,  A  Ro 
man  Singer  was  notable  for  that  extreme  sim 
plicity  of  style  which  has  since  become  one  of  Mr. 
Crawford's  most  effective  assets ;  Marzio's  Cruci 
fix,  as  representing  a  long  step  forward  in  the 
technique  of  unity  of  plot;  Kahled,  as  the  most 


FRANCIS  MARION  CRAWFORD        13 

effective  and  artistic  of  all  the  author's  purely 
fanciful  efforts.  But  the  volumes  which  it  seems 
worth  while  to  single  out  for  more  detailed  com 
ment  are  The  Three  Fates,  A  Cigarette  Maker's 
Romance  and  the  Saracinesca  trilogy. 

It  is  a  curious  and  unexplained  fact  that  when 
the  topic  of  Mr.  Crawford's  novels  comes  up  in 
a  company  of  fairly  well-read  men  and  women,  and 
they  have  all  expressed  a  more  or  less  intelligent 
opinion  about  The  Ralstons  and  Don  Orsino  and 
Fair  Margaret,  if  you  then  make  mention  of  The 
Three  Fates  you  are  likely  to  find  that  no  one 
present  has  read  the  book  nor  one  in  ten  even 
heard  of  it.  Yet  it  is  easily  the  best  of  Mr.  Craw 
ford's  New  York  stories;  it  is  simply  not  in  the 
same  class  with  Katharine  Lauderdale  and  Marion 
Darche.  The  people  in  it  are  all  thoroughly  alive ; 
at  times  they  tempt  one  to  say  that  they  are  the 
most  intensely  alive  of  any  characters  Mr.  Craw 
ford  has  ever  drawn.  The  principal  figure  is 
a  young  and  struggling  author  making  the 
rounds  of  New  York  publishing  houses  and  striv 
ing  to  win  a  hearing  for  his  first  novel.  It  takes 
no  very  profound  intuition  to  guess  that  there  is 
a  modicum  of  autobiography  worked  into  the 
pages  of  The  Three  Fates,  and  its  author  makes 
no  attempt  to  deny  it.  If  Mr.  Crawford  was 
asked  which  of  his  American  stories  he  personally 
liked  best,  this  is  the  one  that  he  was  almost  sure 


14       FRANCIS  MARION  CRAWFORD 

to  name, — adding  with  a  reminiscent  sigh  of  min 
gled  satisfaction  and  regret,  "  The  fact  is,  I  put 
a  great  deal  of  myself  into  The  Three  Fates" 

The  personal  touch  is,  of  course,  an  all-sufficient 
reason  to  explain  the  author's  preference,  but  a 
critic's  choice  should  rest  on  a  sounder  basis.  And 
in  this  case  such  basis  is  to  be  found  in  the  rather 
exceptional  study  it  contains  of  some  phases  of 
love,  where  both  the  man  and  the  woman  are  quite 
young.  The  emotions  of  mature  men  and  women 
are  comparatively  easy  to  chronicle;  they  know 
life  too  well  to  jeopardize  their  happiness  with 
imaginary  woes.  But  the  very  young  are  prone  to 
magnify  their  troubles  and  their  grievances,  to 
torture  themselves  over  trivial  faults  and  absurd 
scruples,  which  are,  of  course,  for  the  time  being 
as  vital  and  momentous  to  them  as  profounder 
trials  are  to  those  of  riper  years.  And  the 
task  of  interpreting  these  youthful  crises  with 
sympathetic  understanding  and  a  touch  of  indul 
gent  irony  is  one  which  just  a  few  novelists  suc 
cessfully  achieve.  One  recalls  especially  certain 
chapters  in  William  Black's  Madcap  Violet  and 
Mr.  Howells's  April  Hopes;  and  to  these  may  be 
added  The  Three  Fates.  As  in  several  of  Mr. 
Crawford's  earlier  volumes,  the  construction  is 
faulty.  There  is  no  clear-cut  central  theme.  The 
most  that  can  be  said  for  the  plot  is  that  the 
author  has  sought  to  show  how  a  young  man  of 


FRANCIS  MARION  CRAWFORD        15 

a  keenly  sensitive  artistic  temperament  may,  in 
those  vital  formative  years  when  his  life's  career 
is  just  opening  before  him,  find  his  ideals  of 
womanhood  so  subtly  and  yet  so  radically  modified 
that  in  a  comparatively  brief  space  he  has  been 
able  to  love  tenderly  and  sincerely  three  dif 
ferent  women,  and  to  receive  from  each  in  turn 
a  permanent  impression,  a  modification  of  his 
character  which  time  will  only  strengthen.  And 
yet,  as  the  first  and  the  second  successively  with 
draw  themselves  from  his  life,  he  knows  that  there 
can  be  no  going  back,  even  should  they  so  elect; 
they  have  been  very  dear  to  him,  they  have  each 
played  the  part  of  one  of  the  Fates  in  his  life, 
yet  there  is  no  resurrection  for  the  emotions 
which  are  dead.  And  at  the  end  of  the  story  the 
man,  sobered  by  sorrow  and  toil  and  hard-won 
achievement  even  more  than  by  the  sudden  and 
unforeseen  responsibility  of  great  wealth,  hesi 
tates  to  put  to  the  test  the  last  of  his  three  Fates. 
He  knows  that  this  time  there  is  no  question  of  a 
transitory  passion,  but  rather  the  deep,  lasting 
love  of  mature  manhood;  this  third  woman  means 
so  much  in  his  life  that  even  her  friendship  is  a 
precious  thing,  which  he  fears  to  jeopardize  by 
speaking  prematurely.  This  denouement  of  The 
Three  Fates  is  one  of  the  most  artistic  and  felici 
tous  single  touches  to  be  found  in  Mr.  Crawford's 
writings.  We  know  that  the  third  and  greatest 


16       FRANCIS  MARION  CRAWFORD 

opportunity  is  merely  deferred,  not  lost;  yet  the 
contrast  between  the  boy's  precipitancy  and  the 
man's  delay  is  the  best  measure  of  the  difference 
in  kind  as  well  as  in  degree  between  the  earlier 
and  the  later  love. 

It  is  customary  to  regard  the  cycle  of  Italian 
novels,  beginning  with  the  Saracinesca  trilogy 
and  continued  in  Corleone  and  Taquisara,  as  the 
strongest  and  most  finished  work  that  the  author 
of  A  Roman  Singer  has  produced.  This,  however, 
is  not  the  view  held  by  those  critics  who  have 
made  the  most  careful  study  of  his  novels ;  nor  is 
it  the  view  held  by  Mr.  Crawford  himself.  In 
deed,  he  has  sometimes  expressed  a  doubt  whether 
on  the  whole  his  Italian  stories  have  not  been 
more  of  a  detriment  to  him  than  a  help.  The 
public  seemed  to  expect  them  of  him,  he  explains, 
and  so  confined  his  activity  to  that  particular 
field  when  he  would  much  rather  have  directed  it 
elsewhere.  Of  these  Italian  books  as  a  whole  it 
may  be  said  that  they  have  at  least  the  merit  of 
presenting  to  English  readers  a  comprehensive 
picture  of  social  life  in  Italy  such  as  cannot  be 
found  elsewhere  in  English  fiction.  The  fact  that 
Mr.  Crawford  was  born  in  Rome  and  spent  much 
of  his  early  life  there,  and  that  later  he  deliber 
ately  elected  to  make  Italy  his  permanent  home, 
placed  him  in  a  position  to  write  from  the  stand 
point  of  a  native.  In  fact,  he  is  on  firmer  ground 


FRANCIS  MARION  CRAWFORD        17 

and  writes  with  a  more  assured  knowledge  when 
the  scene  is  laid  in  Rome  than  when  the  action 
takes  place  in  Boston  or  New  York.  Neverthe 
less,  while  they  are  his  most  ambitious  efforts,  even 
the  best  of  them,  even  Saracinesca  and  Sant' 
llario,  have  not  the  artistic  charm  and  unity  pos 
sessed  by  several  slighter  works.  And  the  reason 
is  not  hard  to  find.  Saracinesca  and  its  sequels 
belong  to  the  type  best  defined  as  the  Epic  Novel, 
the  type  wherein  a  great  social  movement,  a 
moral  or  political  revolution  drawing  to  a  climax, 
serves  as  the  background  of  the  story,  while  the 
destiny  of  some  special  group,  some  single  family, 
some  individual  man  or  woman,  closely  interwoven 
with  the  progress  of  the  general  movement,  forms 
the  central  thread  of  the  plot,  the  focus  of  in 
terest.  At  first  sight  Saracinesca  seems  to  fulfil 
the  conditions  of  the  Epic  Novel.  The  setting  is 
Rome,  on  the  eve  of  the  downfall  of  the  Pope's 
temporal  power  and  the  achievement  of  a  united 
Italy;  and  the  central  thread  concerns  itself  with 
the  fortunes  of  a  single  family,  the  Saracinesca, 
proud,  conservative,  loyal  adherents  of  the 
Church.  Yet  when  we  study  the  book's  construc 
tion  a  little  closer  we  realize  that  the  relation  be 
tween  the  general  and  the  specific  theme  is  of 
the  most  perfunctory  sort.  The  historical  back 
ground  is  admirable  as  a  piece  of  verbal  paint 
ing;  it  shows  on  the  surface  the  days  of  careful 


18      FRANCIS  MARION  CRAWFORD 

study  which  its  author  acknowledges  that  he 
wrought  into  its  construction.  But  it  fails  to  be, 
properly  speaking,  an  Epic  Novel,  because  there 
is  no  close  and  necessary  connection  between  the 
historical  movement  then  going  on  in  Italy  and 
the  private  drama  of  the  Saracinesca  family. 
Take  any  one  of  the  big,  unmistakably  epic  nov 
els,  whether  it  be  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin  or  Zola's 
L'Assommoir,  the  epic  of  slavery  or  of  intemper 
ance;  you  will  find  the  central  theme  inseparably 
interwoven  with  the  general — the  fate  of  Uncle 
Tom  symbolic  of  the  slave  system,  the  fate  of 
Gervaise  symbolic  of  the  demon  of  alcohol.  In 
Saracinesca  and  Sant*  Ilario  there  is  no  such  close 
connection,  no  central  symbol ;  nor  did  Mr.  Craw 
ford  intend  that  there  should  be.  For  the  sym 
bolic  novel  is  next  of  kin  to  the  purpose  novel; 
it  teaches  and  preaches  and  does  other  kindred 
things  which  conflict  with  the  creed  which  Mr. 
Crawford  professed.  Nevertheless,  oddly  enough, 
Don  Orsino,  much  inferior  to  its  predecessors  in 
human  interest,  is  in  point  of  structure  much  more 
logical  and  correct.  In  fact,  it  may  be  called  an 
epic  of  the  era  of  disastrous  building  speculation 
in  Rome;  and  the  fact  that  Don  Orsino's  for 
tunes  were  closely  entangled  in  the  general  panic 
which  resulted  gives  us  the  connection  between  the 
general  and  the  special  motif  which  this  type  of 
novel  demands. 


FRANCIS  MARION  CRAWFORD       19 

In  point  of  form,  however,  Mr.  Crawford  has 
never  done  anything  more  perfect  than  A  Ciga 
rette  Maker's  Romance.  In  dimensions  it  is  a 
rather  long  novelette;  in  structure  it  obeys  the 
rules  of  the  short  story  rather  than  those  of  the 
novel.  It  contains  no  superfluous  character  or 
incident,  and  its  time  of  action  is  confined  within 
a  space  of  thirty-six  hours.  It  seems  worth  while, 
even  at  the  risk  of  repeating  what  must  already 
be  familiar  to  a  majority  of  Mr.  Crawford's  read 
ers,  to  run  over  briefly  the  substance  of  this  little 
masterpiece.  Count  Skariatine,  a  Russian  of  no 
ble  birth  who  has  quarreled  with  his  father  and 
has  been  disowned,  is  eking  out  a  pitiful  living 
by  rolling  cigarettes  for  a  thrifty  Munich  tobac 
conist.  Disappointment  and  privation  have  so 
preyed  upon  his  mind  that  he  has  become  affected 
with  a  periodic  delusion  that  a  letter  has  come 
from  Russia  restoring  him  to  his  lost  position 
and  that  messengers  from  his  family  will  visit  him 
on  the  morrow.  Once  a  week,  under  the  spell  of 
this  delusion,  he  absents  himself  from  the  tobacco 
shop  and  waits  in  confidence  all  day,  only  to 
awaken,  when  the  clock  tolls  midnight,  to  a  shud 
dering  realization  of  his  abnormal  condition.  On 
the  particular  night  when  the  story  opens  Count 
Skariatine's  periodic  delusion  is  just  coming  upon 
him.  Once  again  he  tells  his  employer  the  fa 
miliar  story  of  the  letter  from  Russia,  the  friends 


20       FRANCIS  MARION  CRAWFORD 

who  will  come  to-morrow,  the  necessity  of  his  bid 
ding  the  tobacconist  good-by.  The  tobacconist's 
wife,  who  refuses  to  believe  any  part  of  the  count's 
story,  or  even  that  he  is  a  count  at  all,  rudely 
breaks  in  upon  him  with  a  claim  for  money,  the 
value  of  a  stolen  mechanical  figure,  a  Viennese 
Gigerl,  for  the  loss  of  which  the  count  is  in 
reality  not  responsible.  Incensed,  however,  by  the 
woman's  attitude  and  relying  upon  the  visionary 
fortune  which  he  expects  upon  the  morrow,  Count 
Skariatine  rashly  gives  his  word  of  honor  that  the 
value  of  the  Gigerl  shall  be  paid  within  twenty- 
four  hours.  The  next  day  runs  its  usual  course, 
and  the  evening  finds  the  count  slowly  struggling 
to  a  consciousness  that  not  only  have  his  friends 
failed  to  come,  but  that  he  has  pledged  his  honor 
to  pay  a  sum  of  money  which  he  does  not  possess, 
and  has  no  hope  of  raising  in  time,  and  that  he 
is  not  willing  to  live  dishonored.  The  rest  of  the 
story  tells  how  Vjera,  the  humble  Russian  girl 
who  day  after  day  has  rolled  cigarettes  side  by 
side  with  the  count  and  learned  to  love  him  with 
dumb  hopelessness,  discovers  his  desperate  need 
and  comes  to  his  aid;  how  the  count,  under  the 
spell  of  his  temporary  insanity,  declares  his  love 
for  her  and  makes  extravagant  promises  of  the 
wonderful  things  he  will  do  for  her  as  soon  as 
his  estates  are  restored  to  him;  how  she  raises 
the  money  needed  to  save  his  honor,  and  how 


21 

finally,  when  on  the  morrow  the  count  returns  as 
usual  to  his  bench,  and  the  friends  he  has  so  long 
awaited  actually  do  arrive  and  bring  him  word 
that  he  is  sole  heir  to  his  father's  wealth,  he  pre 
sents  to  them  the  humble  little  cigarette-maker  as 
the  future  Countess  Skariatine: 

I  had  contracted  a  debt  of  honor,  and  I  had  noth 
ing  wherewith  to  pay  it.  There  was  but  an  hour  left 
— an  hour,  and  then  my  life  and  my  honor  would 
have  gone  together.  .  .  .  She  saved  me,  gentlemen; 
she  cut  off  her  beautiful  hair  from  her  head  and  sold 
it  for  me.  But  that  is  not  the  reason  why  she  is  to 
be  my  wife.  There  is  a  better  reason  than  that.  I 
love  her,  gentlemen,  with  all  my  heart  and  soul,  and 
she  has  told  me  that  she  loves  me. 

It  is  in  passages  such  as  this  that  we  get  the 
key  to  Mr.  Crawford's  perennial  hold  upon  the 
hearts  of  his  readers.  His  real  strength  lies  not 
in  his  mastery  of  technique  or  his  originality  of 
plot,  but  in  his  ability  to  picture  for  us  honest 
gentlemen  and  noble  women,  whom  we  are  the 
better  for  having  known  if  only  through  the  me 
dium  of  the  printed  page.  If  there  is  room  for 
choice,  his  men  are  better  than  his  women,  more 
finely  drawn,  with  subtler  understanding.  There 
is  a  long  list  of  them  whom  you  cannot  forget 
even  if  you  would — even  in  Saracmesca  alone 


22       FRANCIS  MARION  CRAWFORD 

there  are  a  whole  group  whom  it  is  a  joy  to  re 
member:  old  Saracinesca,  with  his  chronic  fond 
ness  for  quarreling  with  his  well-loved  son ;  the 
melancholy  Spica,  whose  fame  in  duels  made  him 
a  memento  mori  wherever  he  went;  even  Astrar- 
dente,  the  worn-out  old  dandy,  shows  at  the  last 
certain  fine  instincts  which  make  us  glad  of  the 
privilege  of  having  known  him.  It  is  doubtful 
whether  any  of  the  novelists  who  are  writing  to 
day  have  given  the  world  so  many  characters  whom 
the  average  reader  will  remember  with  pleasure 
and  years  afterward  recall  by  name. 

What  place  will  be  ultimately  assigned  to  Mr. 
Crawford  in  the  history  of  fiction  it  is  somewhat 
early  to  predict.  Excepting  as  a  conservative 
force,  it  is  doubtful  whether  he  has  influenced  the 
formal  development  of  the  modern  novel  in  any 
important  degree.  In  a  history  of  technique,  he 
could  not  be  cited,  in  the  way  that  Henry  James 

r 

or  Emile  Zola  must  be  cited,  over  and  over  again, 
as  the  inventor  of  a  peculiar  manner  or  the 
founder  of  a  new  school.  Writers  of  a  more 
striking  and  flamboyant  type  leave  a  trail  behind 
them  as  conspicuous  as  the  tail  of  a  comet. 
Gabriele  d'Annunzio,  for  instance,  from  the  mo 
ment  that  he  sprang  into  public  notice,  radiated 
a  clear  and  an  ever-widening  circle  of  influence, 
the  effects  of  which  can  be  easily  traced  by  any 
one  who  cares  to  take  the  trouble,  in  the  younger 


FRANCIS  MARION  CRAWFORD        23 

generation  of  Continental  writers.  His  imitators 
are  as  conspicuous  as  they  would  be  if  he  had 
chosen  to  wear  a  scarlet  necktie  and  they  had 
chosen  to  copy  him  in  that.  It  would  be  difficult 
to  imagine  Marion  Crawford  ever  having  done 
anything,  in  a  literary  way,  sufficiently  flaunting 
to  warrant  the  symbolism  of  a  red  necktie.  He 
remained  from  first  to  last,  as  he  wished  to  re 
main,  wholly  free  from  mannerism ;  and  one  of  the 
qualities  which  give  to  his  books  an  unconscious 
charm  is  a  simplicity  of  style  and  method  which 
may  be  compared  to  that  rare  good  taste  in  dress 
which  does  not  draw  attention  to  itself. 

It  has  sometimes  been  claimed  that  Mr.  Craw 
ford  was  in  a  measure  responsible  for  the  modern 
spread  of  cosmopolitanism  in  fiction ;  but  at  best 
it  must  have  been  a  remote  influence,  since  his 
was  of  that  rare  and  perfect  kind  that  few  others 
possess  the  skill  to  imitate.  We  have,  of  course, 
a  surfeit  of  novelists  who  choose  to  lay  their 
scenes  all  the  way  around  the  world  and  back 
again;  and  while  they  lead  us  on  a  gay  chase 
across  three  continents,  their  point  of  view  all 
the  time  remains  insularly  British  or  aggressively 
American.  With  this  type  of  pseudo-cosmopoli 
tanism,  that  of  Mr.  Crawford  has  nothing  in 
common.  It  has  often  been  said  of  him,  that  he 
was  one  of  the  very  few  Americans  who  had  been 
mistaken  in  Paris  for  a  Frenchman,  in  Munich 


24       FRANCIS  MARION  CRAWFORD 

for  a  German,  and  in  Rome  for  an  Italian;  and 
this  power  of  assimilating  racial  traits  and  stand 
points  he  carried  over  into  his  novels.  He  was 
not  so  much  a  cosmopolitan,  in  the  sense  of  a 
man  whose  home  is  the  world,  as  he  was  a  man 
who  has  chanced  to  have  a  succession  of  different 
homes  in  widely  scattered  portions  of  the  globe. 
His  fondness  for  the  cities  where  he  successively 
stayed  and  worked, — for  Munich  and  Prague, 
Constantinople  and  Rome  and  Paris, — always  gets 
into  his  pages  in  spite  of  him,  and  passes  on  some 
thing  of  its  contagion  to  the  reader,  from  between 
the  lines.  It  is  distinctly  worth  noting  that  he 
has  always  from  choice  written  of  what  was  near 
at  hand.  Mr.  Isaacs,  his  first  book,  it  is  true, 
was  written  after  his  return  to  America,  but  be 
fore  the  first  intensity  of  his  impressions  had  be 
gun  to  fade.  And  it  is  significant  that,  although 
he  had  a  rich  store  of  material  as  a  result  of  his 
two  years'  residence  in  India,  he  never  again  re 
verted  to  it.  There  was  in  particular  one  story, 
drawn  from  the  earlier  life  of  the  man  who  served 
as  prototype  of  Mr.  Isaacs,  which  Mr.  Crawford 
had  mapped  out  and,  even  so  recently  as  two  years 
before  his  death,  still  talked  of  writing.  But  it 
was  one  of  the  books  destined  to  remain  unwritten. 
Yet,  whatever  other  influence  Marion  Crawford 
may  have  exerted,  it  is  at  least  beyond  question 
that  few  novelists  of  the  present  day  have  been 


FRANCIS  MARION  CRAWFORD       25 

more  widely  read,  or  have  had  a  more  salutary 
effect  in  fostering  a  taste  for  what  is  clean  and 
pure  and  high-minded  in  literature  and  in  life. 
He  has  shown  that  it  is  possible  to  win  and  hold 
a  very  wide  public,  while  maintaining  a  certain 
high  standard  of  literary  quality;  he  has  shown 
that  it  is  possible  to  offer  social  and  domestic 
problems  that  will  appeal  to  mature  and  thought 
ful  readers,  and  at  the  same  time  contain  nothing 
which  one  might  hesitate  to  put  into  the  hands 
of  the  young  and  thoughtless.  He  has  set,  in 
these  respects,  a  sort  of  high-water  mark  for  fic 
tion  which  frankly  and  honestly  professes  only  to 
entertain :  and  in  doing  this,  he  is  largely  re 
sponsible  for  the  increased  proportion  of  clean, 
healthy,  vigorous  fiction  that  our  younger  writers 
are  giving  us  to-day.  Nevertheless  he  occupies 
a  position  somewhat  apart  from  the  general  trend 
of  the  novel  of  to-day  and  of  to-morrow,  and  for 
that  reason  is  somewhat  difficult  to  class.  Almost 
any  comparison  that  one  ventures  to  make  is  likely 
to  strike  a  majority  of  readers  as  odd  and  un 
justified.  Recently  one  of  the  English  reviews 
spoke  of  him  as  approaching  most  nearly  to  Trol- 
lope  and  Mrs.  Oliphant, — a  curious  partnership, 
which  the  writer  wisely  did  not  try  to  justify.  In 
purpose  and  ideals,  as  well  as  in  the  uniformly 
readable  quality  of  his  books,  he  suggests  a  cer 
tain  kinship  with  the  late  William  Black.  Yet  of 


26      FRANCIS  MARION  CRAWFORD 

the  two  Mr.  Crawford  is  undeniably  the  finer 
artist,  as  well  as  the  better  story  teller,  with  a 
far  better  chance  of  being  remembered  by  a  later 
generation.  And  whatever  position  is  ultimately 
assigned  to  him,  one  thing  is  certain:  that  the 
general  tendency  of  academic  criticism  will  be  to 
do  him  ampler  justice  and  concede  to  him  a  higher 
meed  of  praise  than  he  has  hitherto  received. 


KATE  DOUGLAS  W1GGIN 


KATE  DOUGLAS  WIGGIN 

KATE  DOUGLAS  WIGGIN  is  one  of  those  rare 
and  delightful  spirits  in  modern  literature  who, 
by  a  certain  quiet  charm  of  their  own,  have  freed 
themselves  from  most  of  the  trammels  of  form 
and  tradition  to  which  more  ordinary  writers  are 
subject;  who  even  in  doing  quite  ordinary  things 
do  them  in  an  extraordinary  way ;  who,  in  all  they 
do,  are  in  themselves,  their  personality,  their  at 
titudes  toward  life,  their  own  best  excuse  for  so 
doing — and  who,  when  they  happen  to  fit  in  most 
appropriately  to  a  particular  scheme  of  things — 
as,  for  instance,  Kate  Douglas  Wiggin  herself  fits 
into  a  volume  upon  American  Story  Tellers — do 
so  with  a  unique  appropriateness. 

Ordinarily,  the  qualities  or  the  demerits  of  a 
literary  production  are  matters  to  be  determined 
quite  aside  from  an  author's  personality,  the  place 
and  hour  of  his  or  her  birth,  the  inches  of  his  or 
her  stature  and  all  the  other  little  details  of  a 
personal  or  domestic  nature  into  which,  after  our 
modern  habit,  we  are  forever  too  closely  inquiring. 
In  the  present  case,  however,  there  are  just  a  few 
facts  that  are  worth  putting  briefly  before  us  at 

27 


28  KATE  DOUGLAS  WIGGIN 

the  start  in  order  to  understand  more  clearly  this 
particular  author's  sources  of  inspiration,  range 
of  interests  and  limitations  of  experience.  That 
she  was  born  in  Philadelphia;  that  she  lived 
throughout  her  girlhood  in  the  midst  of  the  peace 
ful  beauty  of  rural  New  England ;  that  at  the  age 
of  eighteen,  after  her  stepfather's  failing  health 
had  made  a  removal  to  California  imperative,  she 
joined  her  family  at  Santa  Barbara  immediately 
after  her  graduation  from  the  Abbot  Academy  at 
Andover ;  that  she  has  been  twice  married,  the 
second  time  to  Mr.  George  C.  Riggs  in  1895 — 
although  she  continues  to  use  her  earlier  name  as 
the  signature  of  her  literary  productions;  that 
it  was  directly  through  her  efforts  that  the  first 
free  kindergartens  for  poor  children  were  or 
ganized  in  this  country ;  and  that  for  the  past 
twenty-five  years  she  has  been  prominently  asso 
ciated  in  many  an  administrative  capacity  with 
important  educational  movements — these  facts 
concern  us  for  our  present  purpose  only  to  the 
extent  to  which  they  explain  why  her  writings  are 
what  they  are,  and  why  they  could  not  well  have 
been  otherwise. 

A  single  sentence  will  serve  to  make  this  clear. 

Kate  Douglas  Wiggin  is  at  heart  a  romanticist 

(  whose  romance  is  woven  not  from  the  stuff  that 

dreams    are    made    of,    but    from    the    homespun 

threads  of  every-day  life.     She  has  an  exuberant 


KATE  DOUGLAS  WIGGIN  29 

and  unquenchable  spirit  of  optimism,  of  the  sort 
that  bubbles  up  spontaneously  at  the  most  un 
likely  moments,  casting  a  dash  of  gold  across 
her  pages,  just  at  the  point  where  the  shadows 
seem  to  lie  heaviest.  She  reaches  the  heart  and 
she  appeals  to  the  memory  because  she  has  in 
abundance  this  power  of  making  very  ordinary 
lives  seem  beautiful;  because  she  writes  only  of 
the  life  that  she  has  seen;  and  because,  from  the 
first  story  that  she  wrote  up  to  the  most  recent, 
she  has  always  preserved  the  clear  directness  of 
narration,  the  unaffectedness  of  form  that  are  the 
qualities  inborn  in  any  one  who  hopes  to  interest 
a  youthful  audience,  to  hold  bright,  eager  little 
faces  under  the  spell  of  a  spoken  tale. 

A  glance  down  the  list  of  Kate  Douglas  Wig- 
gin's  writings  in  any  one  of  her  recent  volumes 
reveals  upward  of  a  score  of  titles — and  these 
are  exclusive  of  the  educational  books  and  the 
various  collections  of  children's  stories  that  she 
has  compiled  and  edited  in  conjunction  with  her 
sister,  Nora  Archibald  Smith.  It  would  seem  at  a 
glance  that  Mrs.  Wiggin  had  a  rare  fertility  of 
imagination,  a  wide  range  of  interests  and  an 
unusual  power  of  productiveness.  But  a  little 
closer  examination  shows  that  such  variety  and 
range  as  she  achieves  are  produced  from  very 
simple  and  limited  materials,  like  melodies  of  much 
depth  and  tenderness  played  on  only  one  or  two 


30  KATE  DOUGLAS  WIGGIN 

strings.  The  settings  of  her  stories  are  of  three 
types :  the  California  of  her  early  memories,  based 
on  those  two  years  in  Santa  Barbara;  the  rural 
New  England  of  her  entire  girlhood,  which  she 
has  somewhere  described  as  "  all  the  years  that 
count  most";  and  the  British  Isles,  which  have 
given  her — probably  because  she  came  to  them 
later,  in  the  full  maturity  of  her  receptive  pow 
ers — a  broader  horizon  and  a  keener  intellectual 
stimulus  than  either  of  her  other  settings.  She 
has  said  of  herself  that  the  more  familiarity  she 
has  with  a  subject  the  less  she  desires  to  write 
about  it,  because  "  exact  knowledge  hampers  one's 
imagination  sometimes."  In  this  respect,  almost 
any  one  of  Mrs.  Wiggin's  admirers  will  take  the 
liberty  of  telling  her  that  she  is  in  a  measure  mis 
taken.  It  is  only  that  saving  "  sometimes  "  at 
the  tail-end  of  the  sentence  that  keeps  her  from 
being  very  far  astray.  It  is  her  perfect  famili 
arity  with  the  New  England  fields  and  woods,  the 
New  England  ways  of  speech  and  dress  and 
thought,  the  New  England  types  of  men  and 
women  and  children — the  types  of  children  above 
all  things — that  is  the  golden  key  to  the  success 
of  such  books  as  Timothy's  Quest  and  Rebecca 
of  Suwnybrook  Farm.  Nor  has  her  familiarity 
with  these  subjects  made  her  one  whit  the  less 
eager  to  revert  to  them.  New  England  is  her 
chosen  field  and  she  goes  back  to  it  again  and 


KATE  DOUGLAS  WIGGIN  31 

again,  with  no  visible  diminution  of  interest  or 
of  power.  On  the  other  hand,  it  is  quite  easy  to 
see  how  the  stimulus  of  foreign  scenes  of  the  kind 
that  produced  the  "  Penelope  "  series  might  grow 
dull  as  their  familiarity  increased.  The  whole 
point  to  fenelope's  Experiences,  as  to  Mark 
Twain's  Innocents  Abroad,  was  the  first  sharp  im 
print  of  the  unfamiliar,  the  incisive  force  of  con 
trast — and,  of  course,  each  subsequent  impression 
was  bound  to  become  less  keen,  like  the  duller 
mintings  of  a  coin  as  the  die  begins  to  wear 
smooth. 

Details  of  this  sort,  however,  will  be  seen  more 
clearly  when  we  come  to  take  up  her  separate 
works  for  discussion.  For  the  moment,  let  us 
consider  frankly  what  her  standards  are  as  a 
writer  of  fiction :  what  ideas  she  has  of  form  and 
of  technique,  what  plan  she  seems  to  make  for 
telling  her  stories  and  to  what  extent  she  suc 
ceeds  in  building  them  according  to  the  accepted 
rules.  In  this  connection,  it  seems  worth  while 
to  quote  a  passage  of  reminiscences  by  her  sister, 
Nora  Archibald  Smith,  giving  a  rather  graphic 
glimpse  of  what  sort  of  a  child  it  was  that  was 
destined  to  grow  into  the  woman  who  to  this  day 
has  preserved  such  a  rare  insight  into  the  hearts 
of  the  children  both  of  real  life  and  of  her  dreams. 
The  passage  in  question  may  have  been  widely 
circulated  or  it  may  not.  It  may  form  part  of 


32  KATE  DOUGLAS  WIGGIN 

a  preface  to  some  volume  already  in  its  many 
thousands,  or  it  may  be  an  extract  from  a  pri 
vate  letter;  in  any  case,  the  present  writer  ran 
across  it  for  the  first  time  in  a  recent  article  by 
Ashley  Gibson,  published  in  the  London  Bookman. 

My  sister  was  certainly  a  capable  little  person  at 
a  tender  age,  concocting  delectable  milk  toast,  brown 
ing  toothsome  buckwheats  and  generally  making  a 
very  good  Parents'  Assistant.  I  have  also  visions 
of  her  toiling  at  patchwork  and  oversewing  sheets 
like  a  nice  old-fashioned  little  girl  in  a  story-book. 

Further  to  illustrate  her  personality,  I  think  no  one 
much  in  her  company  at  any  age  could  have  failed 
to  note  an  exceedingly  lively  tongue  and  a  general 
air  of  executive  ability. 

If  I  am  to  be  truthful,  I  must  say  that  I  recall  few 
indications  of  budding  authorship,  save  an  engrossing 
diary  (kept  for  six  months  only)  and  a  devotion  to 
reading. 

Her  "  literary  passions  "  were  The  Arabian  Nights, 
Scottish  Chief  s^  Don  Quixote,  Thaddeus  of  War 
saw,  Irving's  Mahomet,  Thackeray's  Snobs,  Undine, 
and  The  Martyrs  of  Spain.  These  and  others,  joined 
to  an  old  green  Shakespeare  and  a  plum-pudding  edi 
tion  of  Dickens,  were  the  chief  of  her  diet. 

For  our  immediate  purpose  the  center  of  in 
terest  in  the  above  passage  lies,  of  course,  in  the 
list  of  favorite  books.  What  a  splendid  stimulus 
they  are,  one  and  all  of  them,  to  the  young  imagi- 


KATE  DOUGLAS  WIGGIN  33 

nation  and  how  superbly  defiant  of  the  trammels 
of  modern  technique!  Who  in  the  world,  if  his 
reading  had  been  limited  to  these  books,  even 
though  they  include  such  gems  as  The  Christmas 
Carol  and  Undine  and  the  Forty  Thieves,  would 
ever  dream,  even  remotely,  of  the  modern  short- 
story  form  with  its  insistence  on  unity  of  effect 
and  economy  of  means?  And  this  is  an  excellent 
place  at  which  to  say  that  had  no  one  seen  fit 
to  betray  what  Kate  Douglas  Wiggin's  early  read 
ing  included,  it  would  have  been  a  safe  venture 
to  make  up  from  pure  conjecture  very  nearly  the 
same  sort  of  list.  In  the  case  of  an  author  who 
combines  so  many  merits  with  so  few  defects  there 
can  be  no  harm  in  saying  quite  bluntly  that  how 
ever  much  or  little  she  may  know  of  the  accepted 
rules  of  story  structure,  she  deliberately  and 
blandly  ignores  them  wherever  she  sees  fit — and 
to  a  critic  who  rates  the  importance  of  technique 
of  form  rather  highly  it  is  almost  exasperating 
to  find  how  frequently  she  justifies  herself — and 
by  breaking  the  rules  secures  an  effect  that  could 
not  have  been  gained  by  adhering  to  them.  She 
seldom  knows  when  she  has  reached  the  end  of 
a  story;  she  almost  always  stops  too  soon  or  else 
not  soon  enough — that  is,  if  you  are  judging  her 
stories  by  the  ordinary  tests.  But  that  is  pre 
cisely  what  nobody  wants  to  do.  If  she  stops  too 
soon,  no  one  ever  thinks  of  saying  to  her,  "  This 


34  KATE  DOUGLAS  WIGGIN 

is  inartistic  and  unfinished  " ;  not  at  all,  they  sim 
ply  emulate  Oliver  Twist  and  cry  for  more.  If 
she  fails  to  notice  when  the  end  of  a  story  is 
reached  and  goes  steadily  onward  with  that  un 
flagging  power  of  invention,  that  felicitous  mim 
icry  of  human  types,  that  sparkle  and  sunshine 
of  hope  and  faith,  no  one  would  ever  think  of 
stopping  her,  of  saying,  "  You  have  gone  beyond 
your  goal,  you  ought  to  have  turned  in  at  the 
gate ! "  They  are  only  too  glad  that  she  for 
got  to  turn  in. 

Now  all  this  is  as  it  is  for  the  very  simple  and 
sufficient  reason  that  with  Kate  Douglas  Wiggin, 
just  as  with  a  few  other  big-hearted,  clear 
sighted  writers,  whose  purposes  are  very  simple 
and  few  and  worthy,  the  substance  is  so  vastly 
more  important  than  the  form — or  rather,  I 
ought  to  say,  than  somebody  else's  dictum  of 
what  the  form  ought  to  be.  Kate  Douglas  Wig- 
gin  is  in  a  measure  an  anomaly  in  American 
letters,  being  on  the  one  hand  so  peculiarly  native 
and  even  local  that  one  feels  it  would  be  possible 
to  pick  out  the  particular  habitation  of  her  child 
hood  simply  by  strolling  through  New  England 
byways  until  one  happened  upon  it;  and  yet,  on 
the  other,  so  cosmopolitan  that  she  has  been 
frankly  recognized  in  England  by  more  than  one 
critic  as  our  leading  writer  of  her  sex  with  just 
one  possible  rival,  Mrs.  Wilkins-Freeman.  And 


KATE  DOUGLAS  WIGGIN  35 

while  she  has  that  high  standard  of  good  taste 
in  letters  that  makes  her  next  of  kin  to  Agnes 
Repplier  (is  this,  by  the  way,  a  mark  of  sister 
hood  due  to  her  Philadelphia  birth?),  she  never 
theless  has  achieved  that  approval  of  democracy 
so  conclusively  and  substantially  attested  by  sales 
that  reach  the  two  hundred  thousand  mark.  Now 
the  easiest  way  to  understand  all  this :  the  easiest 
way  to  explain  why  her  books  are  what  they  are, 
and  not  something  altogether  different,  is  to  re 
member  that  before  she  was  known  as  a  writer  she 
was  a  master  hand  at  kindergarten  work ;  she  knew 
how  to  hold  the  attention  of  children,  she  knew 
the  way  which  for  her  was  the  best,  the  inevitable 
way,  to  tell  a  story  to  children ;  and  all  the  stories 
that  she  has  told  and  all  the  stories  she  has  printed 
have  owed  their  power  and  their  charm  to  that 
pervading  simplicity  and  sincerity  and  naive  lit- 
eralness  that  made  her  success  as  a  teacher  of 
children. 

And  it  is  precisely  in  the  spirit  of  childhood 
that  the  public  has  received  her  books.  Whether 
she  writes  of  the  simple-hearted  Rebecca  or  the 
cosmopolitan  and  sophisticated  Penelope,  there  is 
the  same  clamorous  demand  for  more — a  demand 
which,  like  all  good-natured  story  tellers,  she  does 
her  best  to  gratify.  And  because  they  are  all 
imbued  with  this  simple,  unaffected,  kindergarten 
spirit,  the  public  receives  them  with  the  uncritical 


36  KATE  DOUGLAS  WIGGIN 

mind  of  childhood,  closing  its  eyes  to  the  fact 
that  the  further  adventures  of  Rebecca  are  not 
quite  as  good  as  the  earlier  and  that  the  experi 
ences  of  Penelope  in  Ireland  and  Scotland  lack 
something  of  the  freshness  of  her  first  months  in 
England.  How  many  times  we  have  heard  chil 
dren  clamoring  for  "  Just  one  more  story  " ;  and 
the  tired  story  teller  says  doubtfully,  "  But  I 
don't  know  any  more  stories;  I  haven't  any  good 
ones  left ! "  and  the  children  answer,  "  We  don't 
care,  tell  us  anything — anything  so  long  as  it  is 
a  story  and  you  tell  it ! "  That,  in  brief,  is  the 
public's  attitude  toward  Kate  Douglas  Wiggin, 
tacitly  expressed  by  the  popularity  of  each  new 
book.  And,  after  all,  an  author  can  hardly  have 
a  higher  order  of  praise  than  this  public  testimony 
that  her  worst  is  preferable  to  many  another 
author's  best. 

The  writings  of  Kate  Douglas  Wiggin  fall  of 
'their  own  accord  into  three  classes,  one  of  which, 
the  purely  educational,  written  in  collaboration — 
such  as  FroebeVs  Gifts  and  Kindergarten  Princi 
ples  and  Practice — does  not  concern  us  here.  The 
other  two  groups  are,  first:  the  bulk  of  her  writ 
ings,  being  stories  dealing  more  or  less  directly 
with  the  life  problems  of  children  and  so  written 
that  they  appeal  almost  equally  to  the  child 
reader  and  to  the  man  or  woman  who  has  pre 
served,  even  though  pretty  deeply  buried,  some 


KATE  DOUGLAS  WIGGIN  37 

smoldering  embers  of  the  childhood  spirit;  and, 
secondly,  a  group  of  books  much  harder  to  char 
acterize  because  they  are  not,  on  the  one  hand, 
novels,  nor,  on  the  other,  can  they  fairly  be  called 
inspired  guidebooks;  and  yet,  unless  they  are 
to  be  recognized  as  in  some  proportion  a  blending 
of  these  two,  there  is  no  other  existing  classifica 
tion  for  them. 

The  childhood  stories  begin  as  far  back  as  1888 
with  The  Birds'  Christmas  Carol,  a  simple,  tender, 
whimsical  Christmas  tale  that  has  quite  justly 
come  to  be  already  a  sort  of  children's  classic. 
Then  followed  in  swift  succession  The  Story  of  ] 
Patsy,  A  Summer  in  a  Canon — one  of  the  few  < 
books  due  to  her  Santa  Barbara  memories — and, 
in  1890,  Timothy's  Quest.  This  volume  is  worth 
while  pausing  over  for  a  moment,  not  only  because 
it  is  an  excellent  prototype  of  the  bulk  of  Mrs. 
Wiggin's  works,  but  because  it  helps  us  to  see 
how  limited  in  their  variety  are  the  threads 
with  which  she  weaves  and  the  patterns  that  she 
chooses  to  make.  Timothy  is  a  lad  of  ten  or 
eleven — foundling  asylums  are  not  over-accurate 
in  their  records;  Lady  Gay,  his  protegee,  is  an 
exceedingly  pretty  child  of  possibly  eighteen 
months  or  more.  Certain  people  have  seen  fit  to 
pay  periodic  sums,  for  the  support  of  these  two 
waifs,  to  a  bedraggled  and  drunken  hag  named 
Flossie,  in  a  reeking  slum  known  as  Minerva 


38  KATE  DOUGLAS  WIGGIN 

Court.  For  the  simple  reason  that  so  far  as  the 
writer  is  aware  this  is  the  one  time  in  all  Mrs. 
Wiggin's  fiction  where  she  has  permitted  herself 
to  picture  a  slum,  it  is  worth  while  to  quote  briefly 
from  her  description  of  Minerva  Court.  Had 
she  chosen  to  do  so,  she  might,  not  ineffectively, 
have  rivaled  the  squalor  and  repulsiveness  of 
Arthur  Morrison's  Tales  of  Mean  Streets. 

Children  carrying  pitchers  of  beer  were  often  to 
be  seen  hurrying  to  and  fro  on  their  miserable  er 
rand  ....  There  were  frowsy,  sleepy-looking 
women  hanging  out  of  their  windows  gossiping  with 
their  equally  unkempt  and  haggard  neighbors;  apa 
thetic  men  sitting  on  the  doorsteps,  in  their  shirt 
sleeves  smoking;  a  dull,  dirty  baby,  disporting  itself 
in  the  gutter;  while  the  sound  of  a  melancholy  accor 
dion  (the  chosen  instrument  of  poverty  and  misery) 
floated  from  an  upper  chamber,  and  added  its  dis 
cordant  mite  to  the  general  desolation.  The  side 
walks  had  apparently  never  known  the  touch  of  a 
broom,  and  the  middle  of  the  street  looked  more  like 
an  elongated  junk-heap  than  anything  else.  .  .  . 

That  was  Minerva  Court!  A  little  piece  of  your 
world,  my  world,  God's  world  (and  the  Devil's), 
lying  peacefully  fallow,  awaiting  the  services  of  some 
inspired  Home  Missionary  Society. 

This  paragraph  is  here  set  down  chiefly  for 
the  sake  of  its  contrast  to  all  of  Mrs.  Wiggin's 
later  methods  and  ideals.  Not  that  she  has  ever 


KATE  DOUGLAS  WIGGIN  39 

lost  her  interest  in  the  swarming  life  of  big  cities, 
the  brilliant  and  the  sordid  alike.  To  realize  this 
one  has  only  to  read  her  account  of  market  night 
in  one  of  the  "  Penelope "  chapters  entitled 
"  Tuppenny  Travels  in  London."  Yet,  in  that 
very  chapter,  she  voices  that  prevailing  spirit  of 
her  books  which  insistently  iterates  that  in  a  world 
where  there  is  so  much  sunshine  it  does  not  pay 
to  look  too  closely  into  the  shadows: 

As  to  the  dark  alleys  and  tenements  on  the  fringe 
of  this  glare  and  brilliant  confusion,  this  Babel  of 
sound  and  ant-bed  of  moving  life,  one  can  only  sur 
mise  and  pity  and  shudder;  close  one's  eyes  and  ears 
to  it  a  little,  or  one  could  never  sleep  for  thinking 
of  it,  yet  not  too  tightly,  lest  one  sleep  too  soundly, 
and  forget  altogether  the  seamy  side  of  things. 

But  to  go  back  to  Timothy's  Quest:  Flossie,  the 
hag,  has  died  and  the  almshouse  is  the  destined 
fate  of  Timothy  and  Lady  Gay.  But  the  instinct 
of  chivalry  and  protection  has  awakened  early  in 
Timothy;  and  in  obedience  to  this  instinct  he 
steals  out  into  the  night  with  the  baby  girl  in 
his  arms  and  laboriously,  doggedly,  fearlessly 
makes  his  way  far  from  the  city,  hour  by  hour, 
mile  after  mile,  till  a  beautiful,  restful,  eminently 
safe  country  house  by  the  wayside  appeals  to  him 
as  the  ideal  spot  where  Lady  Gay  should  find  a 
home.  The  mere  fact  that  this  farmhouse  is  pre- 


40  KATE  DOUGLAS  WIGGIN 

sided  over  by  two  mature  spinsters  who  have  never 
before  in  their  lives  had  children  around  them  is 
not  a  matter  to  daunt  a  valiant  soul  like  Timo 
thy's  nor  disconcert  a  Heaven-sent  story  teller 
like  Mrs.  Wiggin — and,  of  course,  Timothy  tri 
umphs  gloriously  in  all  his  plans.  The  point 
that  it  seems  worth  while  to  make  just  here  is 
that  in  this  book,  as  in  Polly  Oliver's  Prob 
lem,  a  little  later,  and  still  again  in  both  of  the 
Rebecca  books,  the  underlying  motive,  the  germ 
idea,  as  one  may  call  it,  is  a  sort  of  premature 
sense  of  responsibility,  possessed  by  just  a  few 
children,  an  embryo  foreshadowing  of  the  father 
love  or  mother  love  which  is  to  come  later,  that 
makes  the  Timothies  and  the  Follies  and  the  Re 
beccas  of  real  life  bend  their  fragile  shoulders 
under  burdens  almost  too  heavy  for  their  young 
strength. 

It  would  not  be  within  the  scope  of  the  present 
essay  to  speak  at  any  great  length  of  Rebecca 
of  Sunnybrook  Farm.  It  has  received,  to  be  sure, 
quite  triumphantly  the  popular  vote.  Its  cen 
tral  character  is  the  one  that  already  enjoys  the 
widest  acquaintanceship;  and  now  that  she  has 
come  before  the  footlights,  she  is  destined  to  a 
new  and  still  wider  fame.  Rebecca  is  probably 
the  volume  by  which  the  author  will  be  most  fre 
quently  measured  in  literary  analyses,  largely  for 
the  reason  that  it  is  the  one  by  which  she  is 


KATE  DOUGLAS  WIGGIN  41 

most  easily  measured.  If  we  make  due  allowance 
for  the  change  in  manners  and  ideals  from  dec 
ade  to  decade,  Rebecca  of  Sunnybrook  Farm 
appeals  to  the  readers  of  to-day  for  much  the 
same  reasons  and  with  much  the  same  right  that 
Miss  Alcott's  Little  Women  appealed  to  an  earlier 
generation,  and  "  Elizabeth  Wetherill's "  Wide, 
Wide  World  to  a  generation  still  more  remote. 
Indeed,  if  one  shuts  one's  mind  to  the  rather  ex 
asperating  priggishness  of  that  earlier  period,  the 
ubiquitous  praying  and  psalm  singing  and  read 
ing  of  Scriptures  which  in  those  days  was  an  in 
separable  quality  of  all  properly  conducted  little 
heroines,  there  is  a  good  deal  in  the  advent  of 
Ellen  Montgomery  to  her  Aunt  Fortune's  farm, 
her  sensitive  shrinking  from  her  aunt's  rough 
ways  and  rougher  tongue,  her  haven  of  refuge  in 
the  slow-spoken,  slow-moving  farmer,  Mr.  Van 
Brunt;  and,  in  general,  the  whole  atmosphere  be 
hind  the  story  of  New  England  farm  life,  farm 
hardships  and  farm  festivals — there  is,  it  seems 
to  me,  in  all  this  a  great  deal  of  the  same  sort 
of  appeal  as  that  which  the  present  generation 
finds  in  Rebecca.  But,  of  course,  there  is  one 
rather  important  distinction:  it  was  the  habit  in 
those  days  to  look  resignedly  upon  this  world 
as  a  vale  of  tears  to  be  passed  through  somehow 
as  best  one  could;  while  to  Kate  Douglas  Wiggin 
and  to  one  and  all  of  her  heroines,  it  is  a  supremely 


42  KATE  DOUGLAS  WIGGIN 

glorious  thing  just  to  be  alive  and  to  smell  the 
flowers  and  see  the  sunshine — and  the  author  who 
can  spread  the  contagion  of  such  feeling  among 
a  few  thousand  of  readers  is  a  sort  of  "  inspired 
Home  Missionary  Society  "  in  herself. 

One  would  like  to  have  the  space  to  say  a  few 
pleasant  things  about  Rose  o'  the  River,  which  is 
as  tranquil  and  naive  a  little  pastoral  as  a  modern 
Daphnis  and  Chloe.  The  Old  Pedbody  Pew  is 
another  slim  little  volume — at  least  so  far  as  its 
text  goes;  it  is  the  ambition  of  the  illustrator 
which  has  necessitated  the  wide  page  and  ample 
margin — that  tempts  one  to  bestow  upon  it  a  dis 
proportionate  amount  of  notice.  Just  the  ful 
filment  of  a  long-cherished  dream,  the  final  blos 
soming  of  a  hope  that  had  almost  withered  in  the 
heart  of  a  New  England  girl,  now  a  girl  no 
longer,  who  had  seen  the  bright  years  slip  away, 
one  by  one,  while  she  waited,  mutely,  patiently, 
for  the  lover  who  had  gone  away  to  seek  his  for 
tune;  the  lover  who  through  all  these  years  had 
sent  no  word  and  to  all  appearances  had  forgotten 
her.  It  is  a  true  Christmas  story,  bright  with 
the  spirit  of  hope  and  faith  and  love — and,  what 
is  more,  it  is  the  best  piece  of  fiction,  so  far  as 
pure  structure  goes,  that  the  author  has  ever  put 
together. 

The  second  and  last  group  into  which  Mrs. 
Wiggin's  stories  divide  themselves  are  those  the 


KATE  DOUGLAS  WIGGIN  43 

scenes  of  which  are  enacted  in  the  British  Isles. 
As  already  intimated,  they  are  of  a  more  urbane, 
more  sophisticated  type,  and  appeal,  in  conse 
quence,  to  a  more  special  audience  on  both  sides 
of  the  Atlantic.  The  first  of  the  Penelope  books, 
the  one  containing  that  delightfully  independent 
and  well-poised  young  woman's  experiences  in 
London  and  in  rural  England,  is  easily  the  bright 
and  shining  gem  of  the  collection.  The  late  Mr. 
Laurence  Hutton  did  not  quite  share  this  view. 
To  his  enthusiastic  appreciation  any  gradation  of 
merit  in  the  "  Penelope "  books  was  not  to  be 
thought  of  s"  Her  first  course,"  he  once  wrote, 
"  served  in  England,  is  as  delicate  and  savory  as 
is  her  second  course,  purveyed  in  Scotland;  while 
her  third  course,  now  being  dished  up  in  Ireland, 
promises  as  well  as  did  those  which  preceded  it. 
We  can  only  hope,  before  the  symposium  is 
brought  to  a  close,  that  she  will  regale  us  with 
Wales  as  a  salad,  and  with  the  Isle  of  Man  as  a 
dessert/^-""' 

Now  Mr.  Hutton's  enthusiasm  is  easy,  not  only 
to  understand,  but  to  share.  Those  three  volumes, 
devoted  to  the  confidential  relations  from  the 
facile  and  diverting  pen  of  Miss  Penelope  Hazel- 
ton,  are  surely  to  be  numbered  among  that  sadly 
small  collection  of  modern  volumes  that  people 
of  real  culture  and  intelligence  find  themselves, 
from  time  to  time,  reverting  to  for  another,  and 


44  KATE  DOUGLAS  WIGGIN 

yet  another  perusal.  But  to  pronounce  all  three 
of  them  of  equal  merit  is  to  proclaim  one's  own 
lack  of  discrimination.  It  is  the  same  sort  of 
mental  astigmatism  as  would  prompt  one  to  claim 
that  there  was  no  gradation  of  merit  between  The 
Autocrat  of  the  Breakfast  Table  and  its  com 
panion  volumes  devoted  respectively  to  The  Pro 
fessor  and  The  Poet.  As  there  is  much  to  be 
said  in  praise  of  the  "  Penelope  "  books,  it  is  well 
to  begin  with  what  little  there  is  to  be  said  against 
them  and  to  have  it  over  with.  Kate  Douglas 
Wiggin,  it  may  be  noted  parenthetically,  never 
attempted  a  regularly  constructed  full-length 
novel ;  Penelope  is  her  nearest  approach  to  a  regu 
lation  heroine.  And  that  simplicity  of  structural 
form,  that  tendency  to  harp  upon  just  one  or 
two  strings  which  pervades  all  her  other  works, 
is  equally  in  evidence  here.  Let  us  analyze,  quite 
briefly  and  without  malice,  these  three  volumes 
which,  for  convenience'  sake,  we  may  christen  the 
Trilogy  of  the  Rose,  the  Heather  and  the  Sham 
rock. 

First,  in  Penelope's  Experiences  in  England,  we 
are  introduced  to  that  perennially  delightful  trio, 
Penelope  herself  and  her  two  traveling  compan 
ions,  Francesca  and  Salomina,  offering  an  infinite 
variety  in  feminine  moods,  temperaments,  per 
sonal  appearance  and  age.  Whether  regarded  as 
a  guidebook,  as  a  picaresco  novel  of  the  gentler 


KATE  DOUGLAS  WIGGIN  45 

sex,  as  a  summer  idyll  or  as  just  a  miscellany  of 
feminine  cleverness,  the  book  is  a  delight;  but 
any  one  who  wishes  to  epitomize  the  plot  finds  him 
self  reduced  to  something  like  the  following: 

A  young  American  woman,  charming  but  fancy- 
free,  finds  it  a  pleasant  summer's  pastime  to  be 
made  love  to  intermittently  by  a  young  man  very 
much  in  earnest  amid  the  picturesque  surround 
ings  of  English  byways  and  hedges,  churches  and 
ruined  castles.  Then  comes  a  weary  interregnum 
during  which  the  suitor  is  detained  elsewhere.  A 
little  loneliness  teaches  her  what  she  ought  to  have 
known  all  the  time  and  prepares  her  to  give  him 
the  right  sort  of  a  welcome  when  he  at  last  comes 
back  to  claim  her. 

The  experiences  in  Scotland  simply  shift  the 
limelight  from  Penelope  to  Francesca.  A  charm 
ing  and  unattached  young  woman  finds  it  pleas 
ant  to  be  wooed  amid  the  Scotch  heather  by  an 
earnest  young  meenister  of  the  established  church, 
but  she  too  remains  somewhat  uncertain  of  her 
own  mind  until  a  few  weeks'  separation  gives  him 
a  chance  to  come  and  play  the  conquering  hero. 

The  experiences  in  Ireland  are  again  the  same 
tune  in  a  new  key  with  Salomina  as  the  leitmotiv. 
Salomina  is  not  exactly  young,  though  still  un 
deniably  charming;  and  not  strictly  unattached, 
because  many  years  ago  she  loved  an  Irishman, 
who  inconsiderately  married  some  one  else,  but 


46  KATE  DOUGLAS  WIGGIN 

is  now  a  widower.  She,  in  her  turn,  finds  it  pleas- 
urably  romantic  to  be  courted  in  a  reserved,  mid 
dle-aged  fashion,  amid  the  Irish  lakes,  the  bogs 
of  Lisconnel  and  the  glens  of  Antrim.  She  too 
finds  a  brief  loneliness  salutary  and  is  quite  pre 
pared  to  signify  a  cordial  assent  just  as  soon  as 
the  Irishman  vouchsafes  her  a  second  chance. 

Such  at  least  is  the  summary  which  an  un 
friendly  critic  might  give  if  he  felt  in  a  carping 
mood.  There  is  a  rather  obvious  duplication  of 
plot  running  through  these  books — which,  after 
all,  is  a  better  and  franker  thing  than  an  artificial 
attempt  at  variations  when  the  author  knows,  and 
the  reader  knows,  and  the  author  knows  that  the 
reader  knows  that  the  plot  is  only  a  makeshift 
at  best — something  to  carry  the  real  vital  sub 
stance  of  the  book,  and  every  bit  as  conventional 
as  a  blue  muslin  rose  or  a  cigar-store  Indian. 

The  real  charm  and  magnetism  of  these  "  Pe 
nelope  "  books  depend,  of  course,  upon  their  per 
sonal  equation.  Mrs.  Wiggin  chose  for  her  pur 
pose  the  freest,  most  elastic  vehicle  that  she  could 
find  for  conveying  her  exceedingly  subtle  and 
equally  frank  observations  of  such  points  of  dif 
ference  as  must  inevitably  strike  the  cultured  and 
well-bred  American  visitor  to  the  British  Isles. 

That  she  has  done  this  thing  with  rare  tact  is 
best  evidenced  by  the  fact  that  the  English  en 
joy  the  cleverness  of  her  attack  quite  as  much  as 


KATE  DOUGLAS  WIGGIN  47 

we  do  ourselves,  and  that  such  a  paper  as  The 
Spectator  genially  remarks  that  she  is  the  most 
successful  ambassador  that  the  United  States  has 
yet  sent  to  England.  The  "  Penelope  "  books  are 
a  part  of  the  mental  equipment  that  the  American 
visitor  to  the  British  Isles  will  do  well  to  provide 
himself  with  upon  his  first  visit — in  precisely  the 
same  way  that  on  his  first  trip  down  the  Thames 
he  will  read  Jerome  K.  Jerome's  Three  Men  In  a 
Boat;  or  William  Black's  Strange  Adventures  of 
a  Houseboat;  and  on  reaching  Florence  or  Rome 
will  wish  to  refresh  his  memory  of  Romola  or  The 
Marble  Faun. 

And  yet  there  is  a  certain  inevitable  compunc 
tion  that  follows  even  a  suggestion  that  the  ro 
mance  of  these  "  Penelope  "  books  is  perfunctory. 
One  feels,  somehow,  that  the  author's  eyes  would 
follow  one  with  a  haunting  disapproval — because 
to  her  the  world  is  obviously  made  up  of  romance. 
She  cannot  help  it ;  she  is  so  constituted,  and  thank 
Heaven  that  she  is !  Because  there  are  so 
lamentably  few  writers  to-day  in  whom  sunshine 
and  bright  hopefulness  and  the  joy  of  living  are 
incarnated;  and  among  these  Kate  Douglas  Wig- 
gin  holds  a  privileged  place. 


WINSTON  CHURCHILL 

IF  there  is  any  one  writer  among  the  American 
Story  Tellers  of  to-day  who  best  illustrates  the 
familiar  paradox  that  genius  is  a  capacity  for 
taking  infinite  pains,  that  writer  is  Mr.  Winston 
Churchill.  That  his  novels  are  born  of  an  inex 
haustible  patience,  a  dogged  determination  to  be 
true  to  his  own  stern  exactions  both  in  style  and 
substance,  is  a  self-evident  fact.  It  is  not  neces 
sary  to  know  the  prosaic  details  of  his  literary 
methods,  or  even  to  remember  that  he  considers 
three  or  four  years  none  too  long  a  time  to  be 
stow  upon  a  single  volume.  Such  matters  do  not 
concern  the  critic,  excepting  in  so  far  as  they 
stand  revealed  by  internal  evidence — and  in  the 
case  of  Mr.  Churchill  they  are  woven  into  the 
very  warp  and  woof  of  every  page  he  writes. 
There  is  no  escape  from  the  pervading  sense  of 
careful  documentation,  plodding  diligence,  end 
less  repolishing.  It  is  impossible  to  read  a  single 
chapter  without  being  aware  that  its  production 
involved  a  labor  not  unlike  the  slow  process  of 
chipping  away  fragment  by  fragment,  grain  by 
grain,  the  enveloping  marble  from  the  emerging 

48 


WINSTON  CHURCHILL 


WINSTON  CHURCHILL  49 

statue — and  no  small  share  of  that  labor  is  ex 
pended  in  covering  its  own  traces.  The  net  re 
sult  is  that,  from  Richard  Carvel  to  A  Modern 
Chronicle,  these  novels  present  themselves  to  the 
public  with  an  air  of  solid  dignity  and  conscious 
worth  that  involuntarily  calls  to  mind  portly,  mid 
dle-aged,  prosperous  gentlemen  in  immaculate 
frock  coats,  who  typify  the  so-called  Pillars  of 
the  Church. 

In  other  words,  the  sum  and  substance  of  all 
adverse  criticism  upon  Mr.  Winston  Churchill's 
books  may  be  reduced  to  this — there  is  in  them  all 
a  streak  of  literary  pharisaism,  a  certain  air  of 
seeming  to  thank  God  openly  that  they  are  not 
like  other  books.  Let  other  books,  if  they  choose, 
be  frivolous  or  melodramatic,  or  ultra-modern  ac 
cording  to  any  one  of  the  fifty  various  and  transi 
tory  schools  of  fiction  that  spring  up  and  pass 
like  mushrooms.  Mr.  Churchill's  books  desire  no 
kinship  with  such  as  these.  They  aspire  to  be 
Literature,  spelled  with  a  capital  L ;  they  are  care 
fully  fashioned  upon  the  great  Mid-Victorian 
models ;  one  almost  questions  whether  the  author 
did  not  deliberately  draw  his  dividing  line  at 
Thackeray  and  refuse  to  regard  any  subsequent 
developments  of  technique  in  fiction  as  deserving 
of  notice. 

The  consequence  is  that  in  his  method  of  con 
struction,  Mr.  Churchill  has  retained  the  chief 


50  WINSTON  CHURCHILL 

faults  of  his  early  models  as  well  as  the  qualities 
that  he  has  sought  to  emulate.  The  conception 
of  a  well-knit  plot  without  irrelevant  characters 
and  episodes  and  with  the  interest  strongly  fo 
cused  upon  some  one  main  issue  is  distinctly  mod 
ern.  So  also  is  the  instinct  which  tells  an  author 
at  what  point  in  the  infinite  sequence  of  human 
events  his  special  series  of  episodes  logically  be 
gins  and  at  what  point  it  ends.  The  nai've  as 
sumption  of  the  earlier  novelists  that  a  story  be 
gins  with  the  birth  of  a  particular  man  or  woman 
has  long  since  become  an  exploded  fallacy.  The 
writers  of  to-day  recognize  that  in  its  broadest 
sense  the  life  story  of  any  human  being  has  al 
ready  begun  unnumbered  generations  before  his 
birth,  and  that  its  end  is  not  within  the  powers 
of  human  foresight  to  predict;  while,  in  a  nar 
rower  sense,  the  history  of  a  human  life  cannot 
in  itself  constitute  a  story-structure,  but  is  at 
best  the  raw  material  for  several  stories.  Now, 
when  an  author  chooses  to  follow  the  old-fash 
ioned  method  of  introducing  his  characters  prac 
tically  in  their  cradles  and  following  their  subse 
quent  development  step  by  step,  and  year  by  year, 
well  into  the  prime  of  life,  it  is  too  much  to  ask 
of  him  that  he  shall  give  us  a  well-constructed 

tlot.     Indeed,  the  form  itself  warns  us  that  he 
attempting  nothing  more  complex  than  a  fam 
ily  chronicle  and,  therefore,  necessarily  of  a  loose 


51 

and  rambling  nature.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  Mr. 
Churchill's  plots  are  not  his  strong  point.  As  we 
shall  see  in  taking  up  the  separate  volumes,  they 
give  the  impression  of  wandering  aimlessly  along 
the  highways  and  byways  of  life,  most  of  the 
time  with  no  clear  structural  reason  for  turning 
to  the  right  rather  than  the  left,  no  preconceived 
goal  toward  which  the  various  tangled  threads 
of  the  story  are  converging. 

Now,  there  is  no  intention  of  conveying  the 
idea  that  Mr.  Churchill  is  unaware  of  what  he  is 
doing.  On  the  contrary,  nothing  is  clearer  than 
the  fact  that  he  knows  perfectly  well  the  sort 
of  plot-structure  that  he  is  using,  and  that  he 
could  have  used  quite  a  different  kind  had  he  so 
chosen.  His  method  is  the  time-honored  method 
of  Fielding  and  of  Thackeray  and,  to  some  extent, 
of  Dickens.  Like  Thackeray,  he  chooses  to  think 
of  himself  as  Master  of  the  Show  and  to  keep  us 
reminded  that  it  is  he  who  pulls  the  wires  that 
make  the  puppets  dance.  He  even  interrupts 
himself  occasionally  to  regret,  between  paren 
theses,  that  the  space  limit  of  his  book  will  not 
let  him  tell  us  more  about  some  particular  char 
acter  whom  he  has  just  introduced,  but  assures 
us  that  we  shall  meet  that  character  again  in  a 
later  volume.  Mr.  Churchill  likes  to  do  this  sort 
of  thing ;  and  the  mere  fact  that  the  whole  tend 
ency  of  fiction  to-day  is  toward  the  objective 


52  WINSTON  CHURCHILL 

method  and  away  from  the  old-fashioned,  confi 
dential  relation  between  author  and  public  obvi 
ously  does  not  concern  him  in  the  least.  After 
all,  it  is  a  sufficiently  harmless  mannerism,  but 
none  the  less  as  out  of  date  as  powdered  wigs 
and  knee  breeches. 

The  practice  of  chronicling  the  childhood  of 
hero  or  heroine  calls  for  rather  more  specific  no 
tice.  There  is,  of  course,  only  one  ground  on 
which  it  may  be  defended — just  as  there  is  only 
one  ground  on  which  to  defend  the  analogous 
practice  of  narrating  the  family  history  of  the 
hero's  ancestors  for  several  generations  back.  If 
we  grant  that  human  character  is  the  result  of 
heredity  modified  by  environment,  then,  of  course, 
a  knowledge  of  a  man's  ancestry  explains  his  in 
herited  traits  and  a  knowledge  of  his  early  sur 
roundings  shows  how  those  traits  have  become 
modified.  But  now  and  then  we  find  a  man  or 
woman  in  whom  heredity  has  had  a  free  hand  and 
environment  has  accomplished  little  or  nothing. 
We  realize  that  it  would  have  made  small  practical 
difference  in  which  hemisphere  they  had  been 
reared  or  what  manner  of  guardians  and  teachers 
they  had  had.  The  strong,  primitive  impulses  and 
passions  of  their  race,  whether  for  good  or  bad, 
are  no  more  to  be  curbed  or  changed  by  food 
or  climate  or  higher  mathematics  than  the  color 
of  their  hair  and  eyes.  When  dealing  with  such 


WINSTON  CHURCHILL  53 

strongly  defined  characters,  it  is  simply  a  waste 
of  time  to  picture  minutely  the  influences  to 
which  their  childhood  was  subjected.  Mr. 
Churchill's  heroes  and  heroines  belong  with  hardly 
an  exception  to  this  dominant,  self-sufficient  class. 
Even  as  small  children,  they  have  a  precocious 
assurance;  they  foreshadow,  with  surprising  ac 
curacy,  the  men  and  women  they  are  destined  to 
become.  It  is  true  that  Mr.  Churchill's  por 
traiture  of  childhood  is  rather  well  done;  he  al 
lows  himself  in  these  portions  to  fall  into  a  lighter 
vein,  he  comes  nearer  than  anywhere  else  to 
genuine  humor.  Nevertheless,  the  impression  he 
leaves,  in  one  and  all  of  his  books,  is  that  his 
characters  have  become  what  they  are,  not  be 
cause  of  environment,  but  in  defiance  of  it — and 
for  that  reason  the  introductory  chapters  of  each 
book  are  structurally  superfluous. 

The  foregoing  remarks,  however,  apply  only 
so  long  as  we  are  considering  Mr.  Churchill's 
books  as  studies  of  human  character.  But  it 
must  be  remembered  that  a  second  and,  in  his 
eyes,  an  equally  important  function  of  his  books 
is  to  picture  the  life  of  a  period,  the  net  results 
of  national  or  social  development.  There  can  be 
no  question  that  he  has  succeeded  admirably  in 
handling  big  backgrounds :  few  American  novel 
ists  have  achieved  as  he  has  that  sense  of  wide 
spaces  of  earth  and  sky,  the  weariness  of  drag- 


54  WINSTON  CHURCHILL 

ging  miles,  the  monotony  of  passing  years,  the 
motley  movements  of  humanity  in  the  mass,  the 
whole  fundamental  trick  of  making  us  feel  the 
relative  value  of  our  own  modest  holdings,  our 
individual  interests,  our  brief  hour,  as  contrasted 
with  mankind  and  with  eternity.  It  makes  small 
difference  whether  he  is  describing  a  drunken 
broil  in  a  Colonial  tavern,  an  Indian  massacre  in 
Kentucky  or  a  political  riot  in  a  New  England 
State  Legislature — in  either  case  his  trick  of 
characterization  is  as  graphic  and  almost  as  in 
defatigable  as  that  of  the  camera  lens.  You  see 
face  after  face,  figure  behind  figure,  each  drawn 
with  fewer  and  swifter  strokes  as  they  become 
more  blurred  by  distance,  yet  every  one  individu 
alized  and  recognizable.  And  back  of  these,  be 
yond  the  range  of  sight,  you  still  feel  the 
presence  of  a  crowd,  shoulder  jostling  shoulder, 
tongue  answering  tongue,  full  of  the  rough  virility 
of  conflict. 

Taken  as  a  whole,  with  the  exception  of  his 
earliest  and  latest,  The  Celebrity  and  A  Modern 
Chronicle,  Mr.  Churchill's  books  may  not  unjustly 
be  defined  as  comprehensive  panoramas  of  Ameri 
can  history,  each  standing  as  a  vivid  summing 
up  of  some  national  or  local  crisis.  Regarding 
the  literal  accuracy  of  historical  novels  in  gen 
eral  and  of  Mr.  Churchill's  in  particular,  those 
critics  may  quibble  to  whom  the  letter  seems  more 


WINSTON  CHURCHILL  55 

essential  than  the  spirit.  One  cannot  escape  the 
conviction  that  the  author  of  Richard  Carvel  errs 
too  far  on  the  side  of  accuracy — that  if  his  facts 
were  questioned,  he  would  be  painfully  prompt  in 
producing  original  documents.  Indeed,  there 
are  episodes  in  Richard  Carvel,  and  in  The  Crisis 
and  The  Crossing  as  well,  that  narrowly  escape 
the  weariness  of  the  historical  monograph,  and 
make  one  wish  that  the  author  had  burned  his 
library  and  relied  upon  the  sheer  force  of  his 
imagination.  Les  Trois  Mousquetaires  had  a 
scant  allowance  of  historical  accuracy,  but  it  had 
what  was  far  more  essential — a  generous  supply 
of  real  flesh  and  blood. 

And  yet,  any  fair  estimate  of  Mr.  Churchill 
must  necessarily  recognize  that  his  favorite  for 
mula  narrowly  misses  that  of  the  so-called  epic 
novel, — just  as  we  have  already  seen  that  Marion 
Crawford  missed  it  in  his  Saracinesca  series.  He 
uses,  with  conscious  purpose,  a  double  theme :  first, 
the  big,  basic  idea  underlying  some  national  or 
ethical  crisis;  and  secondly,  a  specific  human 
story,  standing  out  vividly  in  the  central  focus 
with  the  larger,  wider  theme  serving  as  back 
ground.  Where  his  stories  fail  to  achieve  the 
epic  magnitude  is  in  lacking  that  essential  sym 
bolic  relationship  between  the  greater  and  the 
lesser  theme.  His  central  figures  find  their  lives 
molded  and  modified,  as  all  lives  must  be,  by  the 


56  WINSTON  CHURCHILL 

conditions  and  the  events  of  their  own  epoch — • 
but  they  are  scarcely  symbolic  of  that  epoch ;  they 
do  not  leave  the  impression  that  they  are  the 
mouthpiece  of  their  country  and  generation. 
Thus,  Richard  Carvel  was,  at  best,  an  example  of 
the  Colonial  aristocracy,  but  he  was  not  in  char 
acter  or  career  such  an  embodiment  of  it  that  the 
term,  a  "  Richard  Carvel,"  would  have  any  real 
significance.  David  Ritchie,  in  The  Crossing,  is 
part  and  parcel  of  that  movement  which  began 
the  great  western  migration  that  was  destined  to 
stop  only  at  the  Pacific;  but  there  is  nothing  in 
his  life  which  in  any  way  symbolizes  a  great 
awakening.  He  is  of  his  time  and  generation  be 
cause  he  has  to  be,  rather  than  because  he  would 
not  have  had  it  otherwise  if  he  could. 

It  has  seemed  worth  while  briefly  to  point  out 
in  a  general  way  the  extent  to  which  Mr.  Church 
ill  parts  company  with  the  modern  trend  of  tech 
nique  in  fiction.  To  note  these  differences  is  by 
no  means  equivalent  to  passing  censure  upon 
them.  By  a  stricter  system  of  construction,  a 
sterner  elimination  of  non-essentials,  it  is  quite 
possible  that  Mr.  Churchill's  novels  would  have 
lost  as  much  as  they  would  have  gained.  They 
would  at  least  have  lost  one  element  which  every 
reader  of  them  must  feel  to  a  marked  degree: 
namely,  that  sense  of  the  unexpected  and  inex 
plicable;  that  infinitude  of  daily  happenings,  of 


WINSTON  CHURCHILL  57 

accidents  and  coincidences,  the  meaning  of  which 
in  the  ultimate  pattern  of  life  must  always 
baffle  us. 

Aside  from  a  short,  satiric  play,  The  Title 
Mart,  Mr.  Churchill's  published  works  now  in 
clude  seven  volumes.  Of  these,  the  earliest  in 
point  of  actual  composition  was  Ricliard  Carvel, 
although  its  publication  was  anticipated  by  some 
months  by  The  Celebrity,  a  clever  farce  of  the 
Mistaken  Identity  type,  which  served  its  purpose 
as  a  sort  of  comic  poster  to  attract  public  atten 
tion  to  his  more  ambitious  work.  Of  the  remain 
ing  six  that  have  since  come,  at  almost  uniform 
intervals,  from  his  pen,  the  earlier  three,  Richard 
Carvel,  The  Crisis,  and  The  Crossing,  are  his 
torical  novels  in  the  accepted  sense.  Coniston  and 
Mr.  Crewe's  Career,  while  presumably  resting  on 
an  equally  solid  foundation  of  local  history,  fall 
into  the  class  of  the  American  political  novel, 
with  its  unsavory  accessories  of  bribery,  lobbying 
and  bossism — the  type  familiarly  exemplified  in 
Paul  Leicester  Ford's  Honorable  Peter  Stir 
ling  and  Brand  Whitlock's  Thirteenth  District. 
The  last  of  the  six,  A  Modern  Chronicle,  is  a  new 
departure  for  Mr.  Churchill,  being  an  ambitious 
study  of  American  marriage  and  divorce  and  be 
longing,  in  theme,  if  not  in  magnitude,  on  the 
shelf  with  Professor  Robert  Herrick's  much-dis 
cussed  Together. 


58  WINSTON  CHURCHILL 

The  statement  was  made  earlier  in  this  chapter 
that  plot  construction  was  Mr.  Churchill's  prin 
cipal  weakness;  and  the  justness  of  this  criticism 
may  easily  be  seen  by  a  brief  examination  of  the 
separate  stories.  To  begin  with,  Richard  Carvel 
concerns  itself  with  the  life  history  of  an  orphan 
boy  in  the  province  of  Maryland,  reared  by  his 
stern  old  grandfather  in  strict  Tory  principles, 
but  little  by  little  imbibing  revolutionary  doc 
trines  from  associates  of  his  own  generation.  An 
unscrupulous  uncle  scheming  for  the  family  in 
heritance  has  young  Carvel  waylaid,  kidnapped 
and  flung  aboard  a  pirate  craft,  to  be  later 
dropped  over  the  rail  at  a  convenient  time.  The 
pirate  boat,  however,  is  scuttled  by  the  famous 
naval  hero,  John  Paul  Jones,  and  Carvel  is  the 
sole  survivor.  Subsequently,  fate  lands  him  in 
London,  penniless  and  without  friends,  where  he 
spends  some  weary  months  in  the  debtors'  prison, 
knowing  all  the  while  that  the  girl  whom  he  loved 
back  in  America  is  now  also  in  London,  courted 
by  dukes  and  earls,  and  that  his  present  predica 
ment  is  known  quite  well  to  the  girl's  father,  who 
is  only  too  glad  to  have  a  troublesome  suitor  out 
of  harm's  way.  The  rest  of  the  story  consists  of 
some  swift  changes  of  fortune,  some  well-drawn 
pictures  of  fashionable  English  life  in  which  Hor 
ace  Walpole,  Charles  James  Fox  and  other  his 
toric  personages  take  part;  a  few  stirring  naval 


WINSTON  CHURCHILL  59 

battles  ;  and  finally  peace  between  the  two  countries 
and  Carvel  happily  married  and  settled  on  his  an 
cestral  acres.  It  is  to  be  noticed  that  this  plot 
is  merely  a  string  of  episodes,  governed  for  the 
most  part  by  the  intervention  of  chance.  It  is 
little  more  than  a  highly  developed  plcaresco  type 
with  rather  less  cohesion  than  the  average  Dumas 
romance.  Whatever  literary  quality  it  possesses 
is  due  not  to  plot  but  to  individual  portraiture 
and  a  pervading  sense  of  atmosphere. 

The  specific  story  of  David  Ritchie  in  The 
Crossing  has  even  less  cohesion  than  Richard 
Carvel.  Throughout  the  greater  part  of  it, 
Ritchie  is  a  mere  lad  and  as  drummer  boy  accom 
panies  the  expedition  led  by  George  Rogers  Clark, 
from  Kentucky  northward,  to  the  Wabash  River 
and  Vincennes.  It  is  a  chronicle  of  border  war 
fare,  of  Indian  treachery  and  ghastly  massacres. 
It  is  scarcely  fiction  at  all  in  the  strict  sense  of 
the  term,  but  rather  a  sort  of  pictorial  history 
of  the  Clark  expedition,  painted  in  vivid  words. 
In  the  second  half,  the  plot  grows  more  cohesive. 
Ritchie,  like  Carvel,  is  an  orphan  with  a  worth 
less  uncle  who,  instead  of  befriending  him,  flees  to 
England  at  the  outbreak  of  the  war.  The  uncle's 
wife  takes  advantage  of  her  husband's  desertion  to 
elope  with  her  lover,  leaving  a  small  son  to  shift 
for  himself.  This  son,  Ritchie's  cousin,  later 
makes  it  his  chief  object  in  life  to  hunt  down  his 


60  WINSTON  CHURCHILL 

mother  and  her  companion  and  inflict  vengeance 
upon  them ;  but  long  years  pass  before  he  finally, 
through  Ritchie's  intervention,  finds  her  in  New 
Orleans,  dying  of  yellow  fever  and  is  reconciled 
with  her  before  her  death.  This  and  the  addi 
tional  fact  that  Ritchie  has  found  in  New  Orleans 
the  young  woman  whom  he  is  destined  to  marry 
constitute  all  that  is  worth  epitomizing  in  the  way 
of  a  central  plot.  Now,  it  is  the  lot  of  a  good 
many  human  beings,  both  in  childhood  and  in  later 
years,  to  drift  along  the  stream  of  life,  not  shap 
ing  their  own  destinies,  but  allying  them  with  the 
destinies  of  others ;  and  it  often  happens  that 
somewhere  or  other,  in  the  course  of  such  drifting, 
they  meet  a  woman  whom  they  wish  to  marry.  It 
does  not,  however,  usually  occur  to  a  novelist  that 
this  is  the  stuff  of  which  books  are  made.  Mr. 
Churchill's  own  explanation  of  The  Crossing  is 
that  it  expresses  "  the  first  instinctive  reaching 
out  of  an  infant  nation  which  was  one  day  to  be 
come  a  giant " ;  in  his  opinion,  "  No  annals  in 
the  world's  history  are  more  wonderful  than  the 
story  of  the  conquest  of  Kentucky  and  Tennessee 
by  the  pioneers  " ;  he  confesses  that  it  was  a  diffi 
cult  task  to  gather  together  in  a  novel  the  ele 
ments  necessary  to  picture  this  movement;  that 
the  autobiography  of  David  Ritchie  is  as  near 
as  he  can  come  to  its  solution,  and  that  he  has  "  a 
great  sense  of  its  incompleteness."  There  is  but 


WINSTON  CHURCHILL  61 

one  flaw  in  his  self-criticism ;  the  trouble  with  The 
Crossing  is  not  that  it  lacks  completeness,  but 
that  it  fails  to  be  a  novel. 

Passing  over  The  Crisis,  that  story  of  the  Civil 
War  which  is  at  best  a  less  vigorous  repetition  of 
the  qualities  and  the  shortcomings  of  Richard 
Carvel,  we  come  to  Coniston.  This  is  a  book 
which  deserves  rather  careful  consideration,  not 
merely  because  it  shows  us  people  no  longer 
through  the  veil  of  romantic  glamor,  but  face  to 
face;  but  more  especially  because  it  is  the  one 
book  he  has  yet  written  the  plot  of  which  will  bear 
careful  dissection.  Coniston  may  not  unfairly  be 
called  a  prose  epic  of  political  corruption  as  it 
existed  in  New  England  a  generation  or  more  ago. 
From  the  critic's  standpoint  it  is  quite  unimpor 
tant  whether  the  particular  State  that  the  author 
had  in  mind  happened  to  be  Vermont  or  Connec 
ticut  or  Rhode  Island.  What  is  important  is  that 
we  get  a  sense  of  life  and  of  conflict;  of  impulses 
to  do  right,  clashing  with  the  instincts  of  self-pro 
tection  ;  of  a  grim  party  battle  for  the  political 
survival  of  the  fittest,  and  the  entire  State,  its 
banks,  its  franchises,  its  governor,  its  legislature, 
all  reposing  in  the  pocket  of  one  man,  the  undis 
puted  party  boss.  This  man,  Jethro  Bass,  simple 
farmer  by  origin,  taciturn,  inscrutable,  with  his 
streak  of  sardonic  humor,  and  his  slight,  unfor 
gettable  stammer,  is  easily  the  most  important  sin- 


62  WINSTON  CHURCHILL 

gle  figure  that  Mr.  Churchill  has  drawn — one 
might  venture  to  predict  the  most  important  fig 
ure  that  he  is  destined  ever  to  draw.  Jethro  Bass 
is  not  merely  an  individual ;  he  is  the  concrete  pre 
sentment  of  a  type  which,  though  well-nigh  passed 
away,  is  destined  to  be  remembered.  It  is  not  too 
much  praise  to  say  that  in  the  annals  of  fiction  a 
Jethro  Bass  deserves  to  stand  for  as  definite  a 
figure  as  a  Pecksniff,  a  Micawber,  or  a  Becky 
Sharp.  A  big,  vital,  political  issue  for  a  back 
ground,  a  unique  and  dominant  figure  for  the  cen 
tral  interest,  are  already  two  prime  factors  of  an 
important  novel.  What  binds  the  whole  together 
and  makes  this  volume,  in  contrast  to  all  Mr. 
Churchill's  others,  a  piece  of  good  construction  is 
that  the  individual  tragedy  of  the  story  grows  out 
of  the  selfsame  source  as  the  bigger  issue :  namely, 
Jethro  Bass's  utter  unscrupulousness.  Like  Mr. 
Churchill's  other  books,  Comston  gives  us  the  en 
tire  childhood  of  its  heroine;  in  fact,  it  goes 
further  than  that  and  shows  us  the  youth,  the 
marriage  and  death  of  the  heroine's  mother.  But 
this  time  he  has  structurally  justified  his  method. 
The  childhood  of  Cynthia  Wetherell,  under 
the  guardianship  of  Jethro,  is  to  be  sure  no 
more  a  study  of  character  molded  by  environment 
than  was  the  childhood  of  David  Ritchie  in  The 
Crossing  or,  as  we  shall  presently  see,  the  child 
hood  of  Honora  Leffingwell  in  A  Modern  Chron- 


icle.  But  it  happens  that  in  Conlston  the  focus  of 
interest  is  not  Cynthia  Wetherell,  but  Jethro  Bass ; 
and  the  story  of  her  childhood  serves  a  second 
and  more  important  purpose  as  a  masterly  study 
of  a  man's  slow  transformation  under  the  influ 
ence  of  affection  and  trust.  Jethro  Bass  once 
hoped  to  marry  Cynthia  Wetherell's  mother.  At 
that  time,  he  too  was  young,  with  a  choice  of  ways 
before  him.  He  chose,  then  and  there,  to  take  the 
first  step  toward  the  political  conquest  of  his  town, 
the  first  step  toward  the  bossism  of  the  whole 
State ;  and  the  girl's  clear,  fearless  eyes  looking 
into  his  own  read  him  aright  and  knew  there  could 
be  no  happiness  for  her  where  there  could  not  also 
be  honor.  Afterwards,  when  Jethro  befriends  the 
dead  woman's  orphan  daughter,  and  sees  in  her 
those  same  clear,  fearless  eyes,  his  one  great  wish 
is  that  she  may  always  be  spared  the  knowledge 
of  his  knavery,  the  source  of  his  wealth,  the  secret 
of  his  power.  To  the  reader,  all  the  undercur 
rents  of  dishonest  politics  are  exposed,  naked  and 
unashamed.  Mr.  Churchill  has  nowhere  else  ap 
proached  in  sheer  narrative  power  the  graphic 
vigor  of  the  best  scenes  in  this  book ;  that,  for  in 
stance,  of  the  wonderful  "  Woodchuck  Session  " 
in  which  the  Truro  Franchise  is  jammed  through 
the  legislature  by  a  bit  of  unparalleled  trickery; 
and  the  equally  remarkable  interview  with  Presi 
dent  Grant,  in  which  Jethro  saves  the  power 


64  WINSTON  CHURCHILL 

almost  wrested  from  him  by  forcing  the  appoint 
ment  of  his  candidate  for  a  second-class  post- 
office.  Scenes  like  these  are  enough  on  which  to 
build  a  reputation.  They  belong  to  the  memo 
rable  situations  in  the  annals  of  fiction.  And  the 
climax  to  which  the  story  inevitably  works  up  is 
a  fitting  conclusion  to  an  exceptionally  good  piece 
of  constructive  craftsmanship.  It  happens  that 
the  life  happiness  of  Cynthia  can  be  purchased  by 
Jethro  only  at  the  price  of  his  own  political  down 
fall;  and  this  sacrifice  he  makes  freely,  gladly, 
secretly.  To  the  world  at  large  he  is  defeated 
and  dethroned,  a  man  who  has  outlived  his  use 
fulness;  to  Cynthia,  he  is  not  merely  the  source 
of  happiness,  but  a  man  in  whom  her  affection 
has  worked  a  great  and  wonderful  reformation. 
The  climax  of  the  book  triumphantly  achieves  the 
double  purpose  of  effecting  a  crisis  equally  mo 
mentous  to  the  individuals  of  the  central  group 
and  to  the  world  at  large  that  forms  the  story's 
background. 

It  would  be  an  anticlimax  after  Coniston  to  ex 
amine  in  detail  Mr.  Crewe's  Career,  which  treats 
of  the  same  order  of  corruption  in  State  politics, 
but  deals  with  a  later  generation  and  in  a  spirit 
of  lighter  comedy.  Accordingly,  there  remains 
only  Mr.  Churchill's  new  volume,  A  Modern  Chron 
icle.  Here  for  the  first  time  the  author  ventures 
to  make  woman,  the  American  woman  of  to-day, 


WINSTON  CHURCHILL  65 

his  central  point  of  interest.  It  is  rather  remark 
able  that  no  one  has  taken  the  trouble  to  point 
out  that  in  all  his  earlier  books  the  portrayal  of 
women  was  one  of  Mr.  Churchill's  serious  defi 
ciencies.  Even  in  his  period  of  romanticism,  his 
men  stood  out  strongly,  like  living  portraits;  but 
his  women  have  for  the  most  part  been  mere  con 
ventional  sketches,  either  quite  colorless  like  Doro 
thy  Manners  in  Richard  Carvel  or  impossible  sym 
bols  of  all  the  virtues  at  once,  like  Cynthia 
Wetherell  in  Coniston.  That  is  why  it  is  such  a  sur 
prising  thing  to  find  him  giving  us  in  Honora 
Leffingwell  a  woman  who  is  really  alive,  a  woman 
full  of  illogical  moods  and  caprices,  a  woman  who, 
take  her  from  start  to  finish,  is  very  nearly,  al 
though  not  quite,  a  consistent  piece  of  characteri 
zation.  It  is  rather  exasperating  to  see  by  how 
narrow  a  margin  Mr.  Churchill  missed  doing  a 
big  piece  of  work  in  A  Modern  Chronicle.  That 
he  did  miss  so  doing  is  due  mainly  to  that  inherent 
fault  of  his,  the  unwillingness  or  inability  to  con 
struct  carefully.  Honora  Leffingwell's  story  seems 
too  largely  a  matter  of  the  whims  of  chance  to  be 
of  great  significance  to  the  world  at  large.  Her 
childhood  and  youth  are  sketched  at  rather 
tedious  length,  with  the  net  result  that  we  know 
she  almost,  but  not  quite,  made  up  her  mind  to 
marry  Peter  Erwin,  the  close  companion  of  these 
early  years.  Subsequently,  after  a  week's  ac- 


66  WINSTON  CHURCHILL 

quaintance,  she  consents  to  marry  Howard  Spence, 
portly,  prosperous  and  not  too  young — a  typical 
modern  business-man,  whose  soul  is  in  the  money 
market  and  who,  after  marriage,  does  not  realize 
that  a  wife  needs  an  occasional  word  of  apprecia 
tion.  Honora  naturally  seeks  attention  elsewhere, 
and  finds  it  in  Trixton  Brent,  who  is  an  adept 
at  making  love  to  other  men's  wives.  What  saves 
her  from  Trixton  Brent  she  never  knows.  His 
failure  is  not  his  fault ;  it  is  simply  a  matter  of 
temperament.  But  when  she  meets  Hugh  Chil- 
tern,  with  his  personal  charm  and  his  unspeakable 
reputation,  she  ceases  to  have  a  will  of  her  own. 
Being  for  the  first  time  in  his  life  seriously  in 
love,  he  easily  persuades  her  to  break  with  her 
husband,  go  West  into  the  exile  of  a  divorce  colony 
and  after  the  needful  delay  marry  him.  But  her 
second  marriage  for  love  proves  as  big  a  failure 
as  her  first  marriage  for  ambition ;  and  when 
Chiltern  rides  a  horse  against  which  he  has  been 
warned,  and  breaks  his  neck  in  consequence,  the 
reader  gives  a  sigh  of  relief.  Then  Peter  Erwin, 
her  childhood  friend,  drifts  into  view  again,  and 
we  leave  her  on  the  brink  of  a  third  matrimonial 
experiment.  Just  a  succession  of  episodes,  you 
see;  the  story  of  a  woman  who  does  not  know  her 
own  mind.  The  disillusion  and  unrest  of  the  first 
marriage  are  good  workmanship ;  so  also  are  the 
dragging  weariness  and  the  heartache  of  that 


WINSTON  CHURCHILL  67 

year  in  the  divorce  colony.  But  the  book  lacks 
finality.  There  is  no  good  reason  for  supposing 
that  the  third  marriage,  the  marriage  of  sympa 
thy  and  pity,  will  turn  out  one  whit  better  than 
the  other  two. 

Regarding  Mr.  Churchill's  place  in  American 
fiction,  it  is  possible  to  speak  with  more  confidence 
than  in  the  case  of  most  of  his  contemporaries. 
That  he  has  a  widespread  popularity  is  a  fact  that 
cannot  be  disregarded,  and  this  popularity  instead 
of  waning  has  remained  a  constant  quantity.  He 
builds  his  books  solidly,  as  one  builds  a  house  upon 
a  rock  with  the  intention  that  it  shall  not  soon 
be  torn  down.  He  has,  moreover,  the  advantage 
of  a  careful  style  and  a  scrupulous  regard  for 
truth.  There  are  some  of  us  who  are  inclined 
to  feel  that  he  has  been  taken  rather  too  seri 
ously  by  the  present  generation,  in  much  the  same 
way  that  Mrs.  Humphry  Ward  has  been  over 
rated  by  her  contemporaries.  Of  the  two  writers, 
it  seems  a  fairly  safe  prediction  that  Mr.  Church 
ill  has  a  rather  better  chance  of  maintaining  his 
present  level  in  the  years  to  come.  He  is  still 
young  and  his  later  work  shows  a  real  gain  in 
the  knowledge  of  what  fiction  as  a  serious  literary 
form  should  mean. 


ROBERT  W.  CHAMBERS 

THERE  are  certain  novelists  whose  phenomenal 
popularity  challenges  us,  almost  like  a  blow  in 
the  face,  and  demands  an  explanation.  Mr.  Rob 
ert  W.  Chambers  is  a  case  in  point.  We  have  not 
at  present  a  large  number  of  writers  who  have 
made  good  their  claim  to  a  place  among  the  born 
story  tellers;  but  of  these  few,  Mr.  Chambers  is 
one  who,  in  the  estimation  of  the  big  reading  pub 
lic,  seems  to  have  proved  a  clear  title.  For  this 
reason  it  is  distinctly  worth  while  to  examine 
the  work  of  Mr.  Chambers  with  an  unsparing 
frankness  that  would  seem  unkind  to  a  writer  of 
less  popular  favor,  and  to  ask  ourselves,  without 
prejudice  or  illusion,  just  what  he  has  succeeded 
in  accomplishing,  wherein  he  has  fallen  short  of 
his  early  promise,  and  why  he  has  not  attained 
that  higher  goal  which  has  always  seemed  to  lie 
so  easily  within  his  reach. 

In  the  first  place,  it  is  worth  while  to  rehearse 
briefly  and  to  keep  in  mind  just  a  few  biographical 
details :  that  Mr.  Chambers  was  born  in  Brook 
lyn,  May  26,  1865;  that  he  and  Mr.  Charles  Dana 
Gibson  were  fellow-students  at  the  Art  Students' 

68 


ROBERT  W.  CHAMBERS 


ROBERT  W.  CHAMBERS  69 

League  in  New  York;  that  in  1886  he  went  to 
Paris  and  studied  at  the  Ecole  des  Beaux  Arts 
and  at  Julian's  for  seven  years,  his  paintings  find 
ing  acceptance  at  the  Salon  when  he  was  but 
twenty-four  years  of  age.  He  returned  to  New 
York  in  1893 ;  and  a  glance  over  the  old  files  of 
Life,  Truth  and  Vogue  reveals  his  activity  at  that 
time  as  an  illustrator.  But  the  story-writer's 
instinct,  the  riotous  fertility  of  imagination  that 
insisted  on  flashing  endless  motion  pictures  before 
his  eyes  at  all  times  and  in  all  places  demanded 
a  fuller  and  more  rapid  means  of  expression  than 
that  of  palette  and  brush  stroke.  The  tangible 
realities  of  his  student's  life  in  Paris  formed  the 
raw  material  for  a  first  novel,  In  the  Quarter; 
while  the  yet  undisciplined  extravagances  of  his 
imagination  found  outlet  in  the  short  stories  of 
uncanny  and  haunting  power  that  make  up  the 
volume  entitled  The  King  in  Yellow.  It  was  the 
cordial  recognition  accorded  this  second  volume 
that  decided  Mr.  Chambers's  subsequent  career. 

To  a  critic  attempting  a  conscientious  and  dis 
criminating  study  of  Mr.  Chambers's  work,  the 
first  and  most  salient  feature  is  his  productivity. 
In  barely  seventeen  years  he  has  produced  thirty- 
six  volumes,  including  four  juvenile  stories  and  a 
collection  of  verse.  Furthermore,  his  uncommon 
versatility  once  found  expression  in  a  drama  en 
titled  TJie  Witch  of  Ellangowan,  written  for  Miss 


70  ROBERT  W.  CHAMBERS 

Ada  Rehan  and  produced  at  Daly's  Theater.  It 
is  neither  practicable  nor  advantageous  to  study 
in  detail  more  than  a  fraction  of  these  works ; 
singling  out  such  as  clearly  mark  the  author's  sev 
eral  periods  of  transition  and  stand  as  significant 
landmarks  of  gain  or  loss  in  technique.  But  be 
fore  taking  up  these  separate  volumes,  it  is  well 
to  get  a  general  impression  of  Mr.  Chambers's 
literary  methods,  his  characteristic  practice  of 
the  art  he  has  chosen  in  preference  to  that  for 
which  he  was  trained. 

The  emphasis  of  position  is  deliberately  laid 
upon  the  concluding  phrase  of  the  preceding 
paragraph.  The  disadvantage  under  which  the 
art  of  fiction  has  always  suffered  is  that  there  is 
demanded  of  it  no  such  long  period  of  probation, 
no  such  definite  apprenticeship  as  are  exacted 
from  all  the  other  arts.  It  is  true  that  many  a 
beginner  in  story  writing  is  condemned,  usually 
with  justice,  to  months  and  years  of  disappoint 
ment;  an  augmenting  collection  of  rejection  slips; 
and  the  consignment,  one  by  one,  of  treasured 
manuscripts  to  the  waste-paper  basket.  On  the 
other  hand,  it  happens  every  now  and  then  that 
a  new  writer  breaks  into  print  like  thunder  out 
of  a  clear  sky,  with  scarcely  any  preliminary 
training  and  by  sheer  force  of  an  inborn  talent. 
But  the  important  point  is  that,  whether  prema 
ture  or  belated,  the  success  of  the  story  writer 


ROBERT  W.  CHAMBERS  71 

comes  from  self-tuition.  There  exists  no  Julian's 
to  train  the  budding  novelist,  no  salon  to  give  a 
world-wide  recognition  to  real  genius.  The  case 
of  Mr.  Chambers  himself  is  interesting  and  sig 
nificant.  Seven  years  seemed  not  too  long  a  time 
to  serve  for  the  right  to  have  a  few  sketches  pub 
lished  in  our  illustrated  magazines.  But  when  one 
day  it  casually  occurred  to  him  to  sit  down  at  his 
desk  and  to  turn  the  things  he  had  seen  into  writ 
ten  pages,  the  result  a  few  months  later  was  the 
irrevocable  black-and-white  of  a  printed  book.  Of 
course,  in  one  sense  such  an  experience  is  high 
testimony  to  a  writer's  natural  talent,  and  not 
merely  justifies,  but  well-nigh  demands  his  con 
tinuance  along  the  same  path.  On  the  other  hand, 
such  an  inborn  and  spontaneous  vein  of  creative 
power  is  a  handicap  as  well  as  an  advantage.  It 
minimizes  the  importance  of  self-discipline  and  of 
that  mastery  of  technique  which  is  to  be  acquired 
only  at  the  price  of  many  failures. 

All  this  is  by  way  of  preface  to  the  one  obvious 
and  all-pervading  weakness  in  the  writings  of  Mr. 
Chambers.  For  it  is  important  to  get  this  weak 
ness  clearly  in  mind  before  we  recognize  cordially 
his  many  distinctive  talents.  Some  admirers  of 
Mr.  Chambers  have  spoken  enthusiastically  of  his 
rare  constructive  ability  and  of  the  unerring  in 
stinct  with  which  he  brings  his  stories  to  the 
desired  climax.  To  a  great  extent  this  is  true, 


72  ROBERT  W.  CHAMBERS 

if  only  we  place  the  principal  accent  upon  the 
word  "  instinct."  What  Mr.  Chambcrs's  literary 
methods  are,  the  present  writer  does  not  know 
in  detail;  but  a  careful  analysis  leaves  the  impres 
sion  that  he  allows  his  stories  very  largely  to  con 
struct  themselves,  relying  upon  that  inborn 
faculty  for  narrative  which  we  have  already  so 
cordially  granted  him.  For  instance,  the  ele 
mentary  principle  of  Economy  of  Means  is  a  rule 
for  which  Mr.  Chambers  seems  to  have  no  use.  He 
has  found  by  experience  that  the  public  likes  to 
listen  to  him ;  and  so  long  as  they  listen,  he  sees 
no  reason  for  curtailing  to  fifty  words  a  sentence 
which,  left  to  itself,  flows  along  to  upward  of  a 
hundred.  In  his  latest  books,  he  no  more  sees  the 
objection  to  interrupting  the  progress  of  a  plot 
by  a  few  pages  of  unnecessary  dialogue  than  in 
his  earlier  period  he  saw  the  harm  of  delaying 
progress  with  superfluous  paragraphs  of  quite 
vivid  and  wonderful  description. 

In  other  words,  the  impression  left  by  Mr. 
Chambers's  work  as  a  whole  is  that  he  has  not 
chosen  to  study  carefully  and  to  practice  the  best 
technique  of  the  recognized  masters  of  modern 
fiction.  He  prefers  to  begin  and  to  end  a  story 
where  he  pleases,  regardless  of  the  question 
whether  this  beginning  and  end  coincide  with  those 
dictated  by  the  best  art.  In  a  measure,  this  is 
rather  curious,  because  of  all  the  arts  none  is  so 


ROBERT  W.  CHAMBERS  JJf 

closely  related  to  fiction  as  that  of  painting,  none 
that  should  be  a  more  unerring  guide  to  the  best 
methods  of  composition.  And  yet  in  his  stories, 
Mr.  Chambers  over  and  over  again  interjects  ex 
traneous  details  which,  if  he  had  been  thinking  in 
terms  of  brush  strokes  and  paint  tubes,  he  would 
have  known  at  once  to  lie  far  beyond  the  borders 
of  his  canvas.  These  criticisms  of  Mr.  Cham- 
bers's  methods  are  based  not  upon  individual  im 
pressions  but  upon  facts,  easily  to  be  demonstrated 
from  the  books  themselves.  Nevertheless,  they 
are  made  hesitantly,  because  it  is  quite  possible 
that  Mr.  Chambers  has  been  wise  in  writing  pre 
cisely  as  he  does.  It  may  be  that  his  erratic, 
effervescent,  irrepressible  flow  of  invention  would 
have  become  clogged  and  diverted  under  the  tram 
mels  of  a  stricter  technique.  What  he  does  pos 
sess  and  what  must  be  acceded  to  him  freely  and 
generously  are  a  graphic  power  of  visualization 
that  sets  before  you,  with  the  lavishness  of  a 
glowing  canvas,  precisely  the  picture  that  he  has 
in  his  mind's  eye;  an  ability  to  handle  crowds  and 
give  you  the  sense  of  the  jostle  and  turmoil  of 
busy  streets,  the  tumult  and  uproar  of  angry 
throngs,  the  din  and  havoc  of  battle ;  and  thirdly, 
he  possesses  to  an  exceptional  degree  the  trick 
of  conveying  a  sense  of  motion.  You  are  caught, 
swept  off  your  feet,  and  breathlessly  carried  on 
ward  by  the  irresistible  rush  and  surge  of  his  nar- 


74  ROBERT  W.  CHAMBERS 

rative.  Many  another  writer  has  succeeded  in 
describing  speed;  few  of  them  have  been  able  so 
intensely  to  make  you  feel  it;  few  of  them  have 
given  the  impression  of  the  inexorable  rapidity 
with  which  the  tragedies  of  life  sometimes  succeed 
each  other. 

And,  furthermore,  a  quality  which  must  be  con 
ceded  to  Mr.  Chambers  in  common  with  such  spe 
cialists  in  the  outdoor  life  as  Stewart  Edward 
White  or  Charles  G.  D.  Roberts,  is  an  enthusiastic 
and  all-pervading  love  of  nature — of  wood  and 
field  and  water,  of  hunting  and  fishing,  of  all 
creatures  of  the  earth  and  air,  large  and  small. 
There  is  not  a  story  but  what  has  in  it  some  furred 
or  feathered  creature  that  plays  a  more  or  less 
prominent  part  in  the  structure;  not  a  chapter 
that  is  quite  lacking  in  the  song  of  birds  or  the 
fragrance  of  flowers  or  the  flutter  of  insect  wings. 
And  with  all  this  is  the  unmistakable  imprint  of 
authority.  You  feel  that  Mr.  Chambers  may 
blunder  in  the  color  of  a  man's  hair  or  the  mo 
tive  for  a  woman's  action;  but  he  is  too  good  a 
naturalist  to  mistake  the  species  of  a  beetle  or  a 
butterfly,  or  misname  a  wayside  weed  or  a  wood 
land  creeper.  The  great  majority  of  our  society 
novelists  confine  themselves  so  largely  to  the  arti 
ficial  life  of  drawing-room  and  boudoir  that  we 
ought  to  be  grateful  to  Mr.  Chambers  if  only  for 
the  sake  of  the  breath  of  open  air  and  song  and 


ROBERT  W.  CHAMBERS  75 

sunshine  that   he  never  quite  loses,   even   in   the 
darkest  and  meanest  of  our  city  streets. 

It  will  not  be  necessary,  in  order  to  arrive  at 
a  well-rounded  estimate  of  Mr.  Chambers's  real 
value,  to  examine  critically  more  than  half  a 
dozen  of  his  books.  An  author's  first  published 
volume  usually  possesses  a  peculiar  significance  as 
a  standard  of  measurement  for  what  comes  after. 
Therefore,  In  the  Quarter  cannot  be  disregarded. 
One's  first  impression  in  reading  it  is  that  of  as 
tonishment  at  its  vividness ;  it  is  so  unmistakably  a 
series  of  pen  drawings,  of  things  actually  seen 
and  lived,  a  pellmell  gathering  of  the  humor  and 
pathos,  the  gladness  and  the  pain  of  the  modern 
art  student's  life.  One's  second  thought  is  that, 
while  essentially  modern  in  material,  the  book  is 
curiously  old-fashioned  in  structure,  almost  as  des 
titute  of  coherence  as  La  Vie  de  Boheme  itself. 
There  is  not  an  episode  that  you  wish  to  prune 
away — they  are  so  frankly  enjoyable  for  their 
own  sake ;  but  as  for  plot,  with  the  best  intentions 
in  the  world,  one  fails  to  extract  anything  more 
definite  than  this :  An  American  art  student,  who 
drifts  into  quite  the  usual  entanglement  with  a 
young  girl  of  a  rather  better  sort  than  the  aver 
age  Parisian  model;  an  estrangement  brought 
about  by  the  American's  inheritance  of  a  fortune, 
and  the  interference  of  the  French  girl's  jealous 
sister;  and  finally  the  unjustifiable  and  melodra- 


76  ROBERT  W.  CHAMBERS 

matic  murder  of  the  American  by  the  sister  just 
as  all  misunderstandings  have  been  cleared  up  and 
the  wedding  is  arranged.  In  this  book,  in  spite 
of  certain  crudities,  the  following  points  are  to 
be  noticed:  Here  at  the  very  start,  Mr.  Chambers 
showed  a  rare  power  of  description,  a  distinct 
ability  at  portraiture  of  such  types  as  he  really 
knew;  and  because  the  book  was  written  under 
French  influences,  the  slight  structure  that  it  pos 
sessed  was  logical — even  the  melodramatic  ending 
was  foreshadowed  and  structurally  justifiable. 

Following  this  novel  come  a  succession  of  vol 
umes  which,  with  the  exception  of  one  or  two 
negligible  efforts,  consist  of  collections  of  short 
stories :  The  King  in  Yellow,  The  Maker  of  Moons 
and  The  Mystery  of  Choice.  Mr.  Chambers  has, 
at  intervals  since  then,  published  other  volumes 
of  tales,  such  as  The  Tree  of  Heaven,  and  Some 
Ladies  m  Haste;  but  unquestionably,  his  fame  as 
a  writer  of  the  short  story  will  rest  upon  these 
earlier  volumes.  Widely  as  they  differ  in  char 
acter  and  quality,  ranging  from  painfully  sinister 
horror-stories  to  fantasies  light  as  rainbow  bub 
bles,  they  all  of  them  have  one  quality  in  com 
mon  :  A  wanton  unreality,  a  defiance  of  everything 
that,  in  our  sober  senses,  we  are  accustomed  to 
believe,  coupled  with  a  certain  assumption  of  seri 
ousness,  an  insistence  upon  little  realistic  details 
that  force  us  for  the  time  being  to  accept  as 


ROBERT  W.  CHAMBERS  77 

actual  the  most  outrageous  absurdities,  and  to 
vibrate,  as  responsively  as  a  violin  string,  to  the 
touch  of  the  author's  finger  and  the  sweep  of  his 
imagination. 

It  would  be  easy  to  pick  a  dozen  of  these 
stories  as  characteristic  examples  of  Mr.  Cham 
bers  at  the  height  of  his  fantastic  mood.  As 
a  matter  of  personal  preference,  I  would  single 
out  the  story  which  gives  its  name  to  the  volume 
entitled  The  Maker  of  Moons,  for  it  runs  the 
gamut  of  all  the  varied  emotions  that  character 
ize  these  stories — the  repulsion  of  tangible,  phys 
ical  ugliness,  the  dread  of  unguessed  horror,  the 
witchery  of  supernatural  beauty,  the  pervading 
sense  of  invisible,  warring  forces  of  good  and  evil. 
We  start  with  cold,  prosaic  details — a  favorite 
trick  of  Mr.  Chambers.  The  United  States  Treas 
ury  officials  have  reason  to  believe  that  an  un 
scrupulous  gang  of  counterfeiters  have  discovered 
a  method  of  manufacturing  gold,  so  adroitly  that 
it  defies  chemical  analysis,  and  they  decide  that 
these  makers  of  "  moonshine  "  gold  must  be  sup 
pressed.  There  is  only  one  peculiarity  about  this 
gold — and  herein  lies  the  first  suggestion  of  creepy 
repulsion — wherever  a  lump  of  the  gold  is  found, 
there  are  pretty  sure  to  be  found  also  one  or 
more  curious,  misshapen,  crawling  creatures,  half- 
crab,  half -spider,  covered  with  long,  thick,  yellow 
hair,  and  suggestive  of  uncleanness  and  venom. 


78  ROBERT  W.  CHAMBERS 

The  headquarters  of  these  counterfeiters  is  some 
where  in  the  northern  woods,  in  a  region  of  peace 
ful  trees  and  still  waters.  And  the  whole  ef 
fect  of  the  story  is  obtained  by  the  swift  series  of 
transitions  between  the  physical  violence  of  a 
ruthless  man-hunt  and  the  ineffable  charm  and 
beauty  of  a  dream-lady,  who  appears  to  the  hero 
repeatedly  and  without  warning,  standing  beside 
a  magic  fountain  and  talking  to  him  of  a  mystic 
city  beyond  the  Seven  Seas  and  the  Great  River, 
"  the  river  and  the  thousand  bridges,  the  white 
peak  beyond,  the  sweet-scented  gardens,  the  pleas 
ant  noise  of  the  summer  wind,  laden  with  bee 
music  and  the  music  of  bells."  It  is  hard,  in  a 
clumsy  retelling  of  such  gossamer-spun  tales,  to 
give  the  impression  of  anything  more  than  a  jum 
ble  of  mad  folly.  Yet  the  tale  itself  leaves  an 
insistent  memory  of  supernatural  beauty,  seen 
vaguely  through  moonlight,  and  of  the  fulsome 
opulence  of  demon  gold,  distilling  foully  into 
writhing,  crawling  horrors. 

Lorraine,  Ashes  of  Empire,  The  Red  Republic 
and  The  Maids  of  Paradise,  though  appearing  at 
irregular  intervals,  from  1894  to  1903,  belong  to 
gether,  for  the  twofold  reason  that  they  all  four 
have  the  Franco-Prussian  War  as  a  setting,  and 
dashing  young  Americans  for  their  heroes.  Of 
these  four,  Ashes  of  Empire  seems  best  adapted 
for  analysis,  since  it  shows,  perhaps  the  best  of 


ROBERT  W.  CHAMBERS  79 

any  of  them,  the  qualities  and  weaknesses  of  Mr. 
Chambers  in  this  type  of  novel.  It  is  essentially 
the  type  of  the  modern  novel  of  adventure,  the 
type  made  familiar  by  Stanley  Weyman,  Max 
Pemberton,  Henry  Seton  Merriman  and  Richard 
Harding  Davis — and  on  the  whole,  Mr.  Cham- 
bers's  treatment  of  the  type  may  be  compared  not 
unfavorably  with  any  one  of  these.  He  happens 
to  know  unusually  well  both  the  history  and  the 
topography  of  France  during  the  period  that  he 
has  chosen  to  treat;  he  attempts  no  ambitious 
character  study,  he  takes  no  daring  liberties  with 
recorded  facts ;  he  is  content  to  tell  a  series  of 
rattling  good  stories  that  not  only  keep  moving 
but  keep  you  moving  with  them.  And  there  is 
no  doubt  that  he  himself  is  having  as  much  enjoy 
ment  in  the  writing  as  any  of  the  readers  have  in 
the  reading.  And  yet  it  is  evident  that  this  type 
of  book  is  not  what  Mr.  Chambers  would  have 
deliberately  chosen  as  his  favorite  life  work.  One 
may  venture  to  risk  the  conjecture  that  he  would 
never  have  written  these  books  at  all  had  it  not 
been  for  the  sudden  popularity,  a  decade  ago,  of 
the  adventure  novel,  coupled  with  his  own  fatal 
facility  for  turning  out  pretty  nearly  any  sort 
of  story  that  he  chooses  to  undertake.  Had  he 
cared  more  for  his  work,  we  should  have  had  in 
these  books  characters  less  wooden  and  more  like 
real  people,  and  episodes  more  uniformly  serious 


80  ROBERT  W.  CHAMBERS 

and  less  apt  to  approach  the  border-line  of  farce. 
Ashes  of  Empire  is  in  this  respect  typical.  It 
deals  with  the  Empress  Eugenie's  flight,  the  siege 
and  the  surrender  of  Paris.  There  are  two  young 
American  war  correspondents,  who  happened  to 
be  outside  the  Tuileries  at  an  opportune  time  to 
aid  two  unknown  young  women  to  hoodwink  the 
crowd  and  effect  the  Empress's  safe  retreat. 
These  two  war  correspondents,  partly  by  design, 
partly  by  good  luck,  succeed  in  tracing  the  young 
women  to  their  home,  abutting  on  the  city's  forti 
fications,  learn  that  the  girls  live  there  quite 
alone,  renting  the  upper  apartments  to  lodgers, 
and  keeping  a  bird  shop  on  the  ground  floor,  in 
which  parrots,  jackdaws  and  a  tame  lioness  harm 
lessly  romp  together.  The  war  correspondents 
promptly  fall  in  love  with  the  two  sisters,  rescue 
them  from  the  villainous  machinations  of  two 
German-Americans  (who  turn  out  to  be  Prussian 
spies),  and  after  undergoing  the  usual  allotment 
of  hair-breadth  escapes,  marry  and  live  happily 
ever  after.  But  while  the  characterization  is 
weak,  and  the  plot  conventional,  the  background 
is  really  alive.  We  feel  the  tension  of  a  national 
crisis,  the  dread  of  approaching  disaster,  the 
scream  of  shells,  and  the  wails  of  starvation,  the 
despair  of  a  people  who  know  that  both  from 
within  and  without  they  have  been  betrayed.  To 
this  extent,  at  least,  the  book  is  a  worthy  piece  of 


ROBERT  W.  CHAMBERS  81 

work ;  and  it  is  exasperating  in  the  same  way  that 
so  much  of  Mr.  Chambers's  work  exasperates,  be 
cause  we  feel  that  he  might  so  easily  have  made 
it  better. 

Many  a  sincere  friend  of  Mr.  Chambers  has 
frankly  declared  Outsiders  to  be  his  one  great 
blunder.  Yet  it  is  a  finer  and  more  sincere  piece 
of  work  than  many  of  his  successful  volumes. 
Moreover,  it  throws  some  useful  light  upon  his 
attitude,  not  so  many  years  ago,  toward  publish 
ers,  critics  and  life  in  general  in  the  city  of  New 
York.  It  is  not  surprising  that  the  book  failed 
to  achieve  popularity.  He  committed  in  it  al 
most  all  the  indiscretions  which  are  supposed  to 
bar  the  way  to  a  big  sale ;  ke  ridiculed  American 
culture,  American  architecture  and  American  so 
cial  standing;  and  he  rounded  out  the  story  with 
an  ending  which  sinned  doubly  by  being  not  only 
unhappy,  but  structurally  unnecessary.  Never 
theless,  one  cannot  help  liking  the  book;  it  is  so 
vigorous,  so  cleverly  satirical,  and,  in  the  main, 
so  well  written.  The  life  of  the  self-styled  Bo 
hemian  circles,  the  life  of  the  petty  artists,  the 
minor  poets,  the  second-rate  scribblers  of  all  sorts 
is,  to  be  sure,  largely  done  in  caricature,  but  it  is 
caricature  of  an  easily  recognized  sort.  And  the 
background,  though  frankly  painted  by  an  out 
sider,  and  a  hostile  outsider  at  that,  is  vividly,  un 
mistakably,  aggressively  New  York.  You  cannot 


82  ROBERT  W.  CHAMBERS 

at  a  single  moment  of  the  story  forget  your 
whereabouts,  or  imagine  yourself  in  any  other 
city  in  the  world. 

Far  up  the  ravine  of  masonry  and  iron  a  beautiful 
spire,  blue  in  the  distance,  rose  from  a  Gothic  church 
that  seemed  to  close  the  great  thoroughfare  at  its 
northern  limit. 

"  That's  Grace  Church,"  said  Oliver,  with  a  little 
catch  in  his  voice. 

It»was  the  first  familiar  landmark  that  he  had  found 
in  the  city  of  his  boyhood — and  he  had  been  away 
only  a  dozen  years.  Suddenly  he  realized  the  differ 
ence  between  a  city,  in  the  Old  World  acceptance  of 
the  term,  and  the  city  before  his  eyes — this  stupen 
dous  excrescence  of  naked  iron,  gaunt  under  its  skin 
of  paint,  flimsily  colossal,  ludicrously  sad — this  half- 
begun,  irrational,  gaudy,  dingy  monstrosity — this  tem 
porary  fair-ground,  choked  with  tinsel,  ill-paved,  ill- 
lighted,  stark,  treeless,  swarming,  crawling  with 
humanity. 

In  the  decade  that  has  since  passed,  Mr.  Cham 
bers  has  learned  to  make  his  characters,  even 
when  they  have  long  resided  abroad,  more  uni 
formly  courteous  regarding  their  expressed  opin 
ions  of  American  cities  and  American  customs. 
One  wonders  a  little  whether  this  is  because  he  has 
succeeded  in  acquiring  a  taste  for  our  ugly  build 
ings  and  our  noisy  streets,  or  whether  it  is  simply 


ROBERT  W.  CHAMBERS  83 

a  matter  of  expedient  reticence.  Be  this  as  it  may, 
one  cannot  read  attentively  his  latest  and  most 
mature  volumes,  his  present  series  of  contempo 
rary  New  York  life,  without  observing  that  de 
scriptive  passages  of  city  streets  and  buildings 
are  conspicuously  absent.  The  moment  that  he 
escapes  from  the  city,  the  moment  that  he  finds 
himself  in  the  open  once  more,  on  the  wide-spread 
ing  levels  of  Long  Island,  or  the  picturesque 
stretches  of  the  Maine  coast,  or  the  Adirondacks, 
we  get  again  that  fertile  vividness  of  landscape 
painting  which  was  one  of  the  great  charms  of  his 
earlier  books. 

For  the  most  part,  however,  one  notices  a 
great  change  in  method  in  these  later  society  nov 
els  that  already  include  The  Fighting  Chance, 
The  Younger  Set,  The  Firing  Line  and  The  Dan 
ger  Mark.  He  has  begun  to  take  himself  much 
more  seriously ;  he  no  longer  gives  you  the  impres 
sion  of  deliberately  having  fun  with  his  charac 
ters  and  situations;  he  is  trying  quite  sincerely 
to  handle  social  and  ethical  problems  of  real  im 
portance — and  what  is  more,  to  handle  them  in 
the  only  way  that  is  worth  while — namely,  by 
using  for  his  setting  the  present-day  social  life 
in  the  city  and  among  the  people  that  he  best 
knows.  And  for  these  reasons,  the  recent  work 
of  Mr.  Chambers  must  be  judged  more  strictly 
than  his  earlier  volumes.  Because  he  has  become 


84  ROBERT  W.  CHAMBERS 

more  ambitious,  he  must  be  held  more  closely  to 
account  for  his  deficiencies. 

These  four  novels  have  the  following  points  in 
common :  The  action  is  divided  between  the  social 
whirl  of  New  York  City  and  the  country  homes  of 
the  fashionable  set;  the  central  interest  in  each 
of  the  four  volumes  is  due  to  certain  hereditary 
instincts  or  impulses  which  make  it  either  inex 
pedient  or  impossible  for  a  certain  man  and 
woman  to  marry.  In  two  of  the  volumes, 
namely,  The  Younger  Set  and  The  Firing  Line, 
they  unwisely  have  married  and  the  story 
itself  largely  hinges  on  problems  raised  subse 
quently  by  divorce.  In  The  Fighting  Chance  and 
The  Danger  Marie,  the  problem  is  that  of  unfit- 
ness  to  marry,  the  only  difference  between  the  two 
volumes  being  that  the  one  is  the  reverse  of  the 
other — the  former  presenting  a  case  where  the 
man  inherits  a  craving  for  alcohol  and  the  woman 
an  abnormal  instinct  for  the  flattery  and  atten 
tions  of  men,  while  in  the  latter  it  is  the  woman 
who  is  intemperate  and  the  man  whose  gallantries 
are  uncontrolled.  Now  it  cannot  be  denied  that 
these  themes  are  good  enough  in  themselves ;  and 
that,  if  properly  handled  with  adequate  knowledge 
of  life  and  sincerity  of  purpose,  they  might  have 
given  us  something  worthy  of  standing  as  an 
American  substitute  for  the  Continental  type  of 
analytical  novel. 


ROBERT  W.  CHAMBERS  85 

And  it  is  precisely  for  reasons  of  this  sort  that 
one  becomes  every  now  and  then  distinctly  exas 
perated  with  Mr.  Chambers — not  because  his  work 
is  bad,  but  because  one  feels  that  it  falls  just 
short  of  being  something  a  great  deal  better. 
The  Fighting  Chance  and  The  Danger  Marie  are 
easily  the  best  works  of  this  later  period — so  much 
better  than  the  two  divorce  problem  novels  that 
the  latter  may  be  left  out  of  consideration.  You 
read  along  in  The  Fighting  Chance,  rather  skep 
tically  perhaps  at  the  start,  because  of  a  convic 
tion  that  it  has  been  much  overpraised  by  the 
general  public.  Then,  little  by  little,  you  find  it 
taking  hold  upon  you  because  it  has  much  of  Mr. 
Chambers's  earlier  qualities  and  something  new  in 
addition — it  has  his  pictorial  vividness,  his  skilful 
light  and  shade,  his  rapidity  of  action,  his  mes 
meric  trick  of  making  even  the  improbable  seem 
quite  a  matter  of  course;  and  at  the  same  time  it 
reveals  a  new  power  of  delineating  character,  of 
presenting  us  with  people  who  are  not  merely 
types  but  individuals  as  well,  people  whose  inward 
struggles  and  anxieties  we  feel  a  keen  and  growing 
desire  to  share.  And  then,  all  at  once,  we  run 
up  against  a  paragraph  or  a  chapter  that  gives 
us  a  shock,  because  it  seems  so  out  of  keeping 
with  the  rest  of  the  picture,  so  clearly  the  sort 
of  thing  that  people  do  not  say  or  do.  One 
charitably  minded  reader,  who  is  at  the  same  time 


86  ROBERT  W.  CHAMBERS 

a  sincere  admirer  of  Mr.  Chambers  at  his  best,  ex 
plains  these  occasional  notable  lapses,  at  least  so 
far  as  the  dialogue  is  concerned,  on  the  ground 
that  the  author  at  such  times  has  contented  him 
self  with  merely  giving,  as  it  were,  the  bare 
scenario, — with  telling  what  his  characters  said, 
without  taking  the  time  or  trouble  to  work  up  the 
still  more  important  question  of  just  how  they 
really  said  it.  In  other  words,  the  simplest  ex 
planation  of  the  unevenness  of  style  in  The  Fight 
ing  Chance  is  that  Mr.  Chambers,  to  borrow  one 
of  his  own  titles,  permits  himself  at  times  to  be 
A  Young  Man  in  a  Hurry. 

But  the  real  reason  why  Mr.  Chambers's  studies 
of  American  life  at  times  strike  a  note  that  we  feel 
to  be  off  the  key  is  this:  His  portraits  of  men 
are  always  a  little  stronger,  surer,  more  convinc 
ing  than  those  of  his  women.  Study  them  all 
carefully  from  first  to  last,  from  his  roughly 
blocked-in  women  of  the  Latin  Quarter  and  the 
vaporous  dream-maidens  of  his  early  fantasies, 
down  to  the  designedly  flesh-and-blood  women  of 
his  latest  book,  and  you  feel  that  in  varying  de 
grees  they  all  have  one  little  defect ;  they  are  all 
of  them  what  men  like  to  think  women  to  be, 
rather  than  the  actual  women  themselves ;  in  their 
actions  they  live  up  to  man's  expectation  of  what 
they  are  going  to  do  next  rather  than  to  woman's 
inalienable  right  to  do  the  unexpected  and  il- 


ROBERT  W.  CHAMBERS  87 

logical  thing.  Take,  for  example,  The  Fighting1 
Chance;  in  substance  it  amounts  to  this:  A  young 
woman  already  pledged  to  a  man  enjoying  all  the 
advantages  of  wealth  and  position,  one  day  meets 
another  man,  under  the  shadow  of  a  heavy  dis 
grace  due  to  his  intemperate  habits.  They  are 
guests  at  the  same  house  party,  they  are  thrown 
much  together,  and  within  forty-eight  hours  she 
falls,  unresisting,  into  his  arms,  and  yields  her 
lips  as  readily  as  any  servant  girl.  Heredity,  says 
the  author;  the  girl  cannot  help  it;  the  women  in 
her  family  have  for  generations  been  all  that  they 
ought  not  to  be.  Nevertheless,  the  reader  retorts, 
the  girl  does  not  become  "  all  that  she  ought  not 
to  be."  During  the  weeks  that  follow  there  is 
many  a  venturesome  scene,  many  a  dialogue  be 
tween  the  two  that  skirts  the  edge  of  impropriety ; 
but  in  spite  of  heredity,  the  lady  never  quite  loses 
her  head;  and  after  they  separate  at  the  close  of 
the  summer  season,  and  the  months  slip  by,  and 
she  knows  quite  well  that  the  man  she  loves  is 
drinking  himself  to  death,  when  a  word  from  her 
would  stop  him,  she  continues  to  wear  the  other 
man's  large  diamond  ring  and  play  her  part  in 
the  social  whirl ;  and  only  after  the  lapse  of  many 
months  does  it  occur  to  her  that  she  can  effect 
the  salvation  of  a  human  soul  without  in  the  least 
endangering  her  own  reputation,  by  merely  calling 
him  up  on  the  telephone  and  having  a  five  min- 


88  ROBERT  W.  CHAMBERS 

utes'  chat.  Now,  this  is  not  said  with  the  object 
of  belittling  Mr.  Chambers's  work;  the  greater 
part  of  it  is  good — surprisingly  good  when  one 
considers  that  he  is  a  romanticist  suddenly  turned 
psychologue.  Only  it  does  not  seem  that  a  real 
woman  could  have  acted  in  quite  that  way.  She 
either  would  have  flung  discretion  to  the  wind  and 
done  all  sorts  of  mad  things  earlier  in  the  game 
and  thrown  the  blame  upon  heredity;  or  else  she 
would,  from  the  very  beginning,  have  had  suffi 
cient  self-control  to  keep  her  lips  her  own  for 
somewhat  longer  than  forty-eight  hours. 

It  is  always  an  interesting  question — interest 
ing  largely  because  it  is  in  a  measure  unanswerable 
— what  position  is  going  to  be  assigned  by  a  later 
generation  to  any  one  of  our  contemporary  nov 
elists?  As  regards  Mr.  Chambers,  there  are  just 
a  few  predictions  which  may  be  made  without 
hesitation.  As  a  writer  of  short  stories,  he  has 
produced  at  least  half  a  dozen  that  deserve  to  rank 
among  the  best  that  American  writers  have  pro 
duced;  and  no  future  collection  of  representative 
short  stories  can  claim  to  be  complete  if  it  happens 
to  neglect  his  name.  As  a  novelist,  he  has  to  face 
the  handicap  that  must  accompany  too  great  an 
adaptability.  With  rare  exceptions,  the  great 
names  in  fiction  are  those  of  writers  whose  work 
throughout  has  been  fairly  homogeneous — writers 
who  have  known  from  the  beginning  precisely 


ROBERT  W.  CHAMBERS  89 

what  sort  of  books  they  wanted  to  write,  and 
whose  volumes  have  differed  in  degree  and  not  in 
kind.  Mr.  Chambers  has  veered,  and  apparently 
with  intention,  in  accordance  with  the  breeze  of 
popular  demand:  first  to  the  French  historical 
novel,  then  to  the  Civil  War  story,  and  finally, 
when  the  demand  was  sufficiently  emphatic,  to  the 
contemporary  society  novel.  In  this  last  field, 
there  is  still  a  hope  that  Mr.  Chambers  will  at 
length  find  himself:  and  the  fact  that  the  last  of 
the  four  books  is  the  best  and  most  sustained  and 
most  honest  piece  of  work  that  his  later  manner 
has  produced  affords  solid  ground  for  the  hope 
that  he  may  have  still  better  and  maturer  volumes 
yet  to  come.  Nevertheless,  the  accumulated  ex 
perience  of  the  ages  has  inculcated  a  wise  distrust 
of  the  literary  weathercock. 


ELLEN  GLASGOW 

IN  glancing  backward  over  the  twelve  or  fif 
teen  years  during  which  Miss  Ellen  Glasgow  has 
been  practising  her  careful,  deliberate,  finely  con 
ceived  art,  and  patiently  striving,  not  without  an 
occasional  blunder,  toward  her  present  mastery 
of  technique,  one  feels  that,  all  things  considered, 
she  has  not  yet  had  in  full  measure  the  generous, 
widespread  and  serious  recognition  to  which  she 
is  entitled.  Some  of  her  volumes,  to  be  sure,  have 
enjoyed  an  encouraging  popularity;  and  in  many 
quarters  she  has  had  cordial  critical  appreciation. 
And  yet,  at  best,  it  seems  distinctly  dispropor- 
tioned  to  a  talent  which  stands  in  the  forefront 
of  American  women  novelists,  outranking  on  the 
one  side  Mrs.  Atherton,  as  far  as  it  outranks  Mrs. 
Wharton  on  the  other, — a  talent  which  sees  life, 
if  not  more  deeply  than  the  author  of  The  House 
of  Mirth,  at  least  through  a  far  wider  angle;  a 
talent  which  replaces  the  riotous  unrestraint  of 
the  author  of  Ancestors  with  that  greater 
strength  of  logical  purpose  and  symmetry  of 
form. 

Now  in  order  to  make  clear  the  sound  critical 
90 


ELLEN  GLASGOW 


ELLEN  GLASGOW  91 

ground  for  assigning  so  high  a  place  to  the  author 
of  The  Deliverance  and  The  Miller  of  Old  Church, 
it  seems  not  merely  worth  while  but  even  obliga 
tory  to  examine  rather  carefully  her  understand 
ing  and  her  use  of  the  technique  of  form.  Miss 
Glasgow's  creed  in  fiction  is  obviously  that  of  the 
realists, — although  her  adherence  to  it  is  not  so 
-rigid  as  to  preclude  her  from  an  occasional  ex 
cursion  into  romanticism.  Her  novels  are  not 
only  realistic  but,  like  the  novels  of  Frank  Nor- 
ris,  Robert  Herrick  and  David  Graham  Phillips, 
they  are,  in  the  best  sense  of  the  term,  Zolaesque ; 
that  is  to  say,  they  have  an  epic  sweep  and  com 
prehension,  an  epic  sense  of  the  surge  of  life  and 
the  clash  of  multitudinous  interests.  This  par 
ticular  type  of  novel  is  so  seldom  successfully 
achieved  in  English  that,  although  there  has  been 
occasion  to  speak  of  it  more  than  once  already  in 
the  present  volume,  it  seems  desirable,  even  at  the" 
risk  of  repetition,  to  call  to  mind  once  more  just 
what  are  its  characteristic  features. 

The  epic  novel,  like  the  epic  poem,  must  have  a 
twofold  theme,  a  specific  human  story  and  a  big 
general  problem — the  wrath  of  Achilles  and  the 
Trojan  War;  the  expulsion  from  Eden  and  the 
Fall  of  Man;  the  fate  of  Uncle  Tom  and  the 
whole  problem  of  slavery.  And  the  very  essence 
of  this  epic  quality  lies  in  the  ability  to  tell  the 
specific,  central  human  story,  and  hold  and  stir 


92  ELLEN  GLASGOW 

you  with  the  pathos  and  the  tragedy  of  it,  and 
yet  all  the  while  keep  before  you  the  realization 
that  this  specific  story  is  only  an  isolated  case  of 
a  general  and  widespread  condition ;  that  Achilles 
brooding  in  his  tent  is  only  a  symbol  of  the  per 
vading  wrath  and  sorrow  and  desolation  begotten 
by  war;  that  the  empty  cabin  of  Uncle  Tom  is  only 
a  symbol  of  the  cruelty,  the  broken  ties,  the  inhu 
manity  attendant  upon  slavery.  It  is  a  curious 
fact  that  Mrs.  Stowe,  probably  without  any  con 
scious  understanding  of  technique,  produced  an 
almost  perfect  epic  novel  according  to  principles 
,  that  were  destined  to  be  formulated  fully  half  a 
century  later.  And  it  is  equally  curious  that  the 
first  American  woman  since  Mrs.  Stowe  to  suc 
ceed  in  writing  a  genuine  epic  novel  should  also 
have  chosen  a  similar  setting  and  a  similar  theme. 
To  state  the  case  more  correctly,  it  is  curious 
that  the  first  woman  among  our  modern  writers 
to  achieve  this  type  of  novel  should  have  hap 
pened  to  be  a  Southern  woman.  Because,  since 
Miss  Glasgow  happens  by  birth  and  education  to 
have  a  knowledge  of  Virginian  scenes  and  people 
beyond  that  of  other  parts  of  the  world,  she  has 
simply  been  obeying  the  most  elementary  princi 
ple  of  good  technique  when  she  chooses  for  her 
setting  the  region  that  she  knows  best;  while  such 
a  volume  as  The  Wheel  of  Life,  in  which  the  scene 
is  laid  in  New  York,  is  to  be  classed,  in  spite  of 


ELLEN  GLASGOW  93 

much  that  is  good,  among  the  number  of  the 
author's  blunders.  One  feels  in  this  New  York 
story  as  though  Miss  Glasgow  were  slightly  out 
of  her  element,  as  though  she  lacked  sympathy 
even  for  the  best  of  the  characters  in  it,  and 
frankly  disapproved  of  the  others.  It  is  even 
more  difficult  for  a  woman  than  for  a  man  to 
attain  the  attitude  of  strict  impersonality  which 
is  demanded  by  the  highest  rules  of  modern  con 
struction — and  herein,  one  feels,  lies  one  of  Miss 
Glasgow's  failings.  She  could  not,  if  she  would, 
help  showing  us  how  her  heart  goes  out  to  cer 
tain  favorite  characters,  young  and  old,  white  and 
black  alike — nor  would  we  have  it  otherwise,  be 
cause  in  her  affection  for  these  people,  whom  she 
understands  so  profoundly,  lies  the  secret  of  the 
abiding  charm  which  they  in  turn  possess  for  us. 
Human  stories,  strong,  tender,  high-minded, 
her  volumes  undeniably  are.  But  what  one  re 
members  about  them,  even  after  the  specific  story 
has  faded  from  the  mind,  is  their  atmosphere  of 
old-fashioned  Southern  courtesy  and  hospitality, 
of  gentle  breeding  and  steadfast  adherence  to 
traditional  standards  of  honor.  She  has  dealt 
with  special  skill  with  the  anomalous  and  transi 
tory  conditions  of  society  that  followed  the  close 
of  the  war — the  breaking  down  of  old  barriers; 
the  fruitless  resistance  of  conservatism  to  the  new 
tendencies  of  social  equality;  the  frequent  pa- 


94  ELLEN  GLASGOW 

thetic  struggles  to  keep  up  a  brave  show  in  spite 
of  fallen  fortunes;  the  proud  dignity  that  ac 
cepts  poverty  and  hardship  and  manual  labor 
with  unbroken  spirit.  Such  books  as  The  Battle- 
Ground,  The  Deliverance,  The  Voice  of  the  Peo 
ple,  are  in  the  best  sense  of  the  term  novels  of 
manners,  which  will  be  read  by  later  generations 
with  a  curious  interest  because  they  will  preserve 
a  record  of  social  conditions  that  are  changing 
and  passing  away,  more  slowly  yet  quite  as  relent 
lessly  as  the  dissolving  vapors  of  a  summer  sunset. 
In  order,  however,  to  understand  on  the  one 
hand  just  how  she  uses  her  technique,  and  on  the 
other  how  she  succeeds  in  giving  such  poignant 
reality  to  her  people  and  her  scenes,  it  is  neces 
sary  to  examine  in  somewhat  more  detail  at  least 
a  portion  of  her  books.  And  The  Battle-G round, 
as  one  of  her  earlier  works,  and  also  one  that 
reaches  back  historically  to  the  time  of  the  Civil 
War,  forms  a  convenient  starting  point.  It  is 
besides  one  of  the  most  obvious  instances  of  Miss 
Glasgow's  characteristic  method  of  epic  struc 
ture.  In  the  first  place,  it  deals  with  the  wide, 
general  theme  suggested  by  the  title — and  in  this 
wider  sense  the  central  figure  is  not  a  person  but 
a  State,  the  State  of  Virginia ;  and  the  story  is 
the  story  of  that  State  before,  during  and  imme 
diately  after  the  four  years  of  devastating  strug 
gle.  But  more  specifically  The  Battle-Ground  is 


ELLEN  GLASGOW  95 

the  intimate  history  of  one  Southern  family,  the 
Lightfoots,  or  rather  of  one  member  of  that  fam 
ily,  Dan  Mont  joy,  whose  mother,  old  Major 
Lightfoot's  only  daughter,  had  made  a  runaway 
match  with  a  hot-headed,  mean-natured  scamp, 
who  cost  her  a  brief  misery  and  an  early  death. 
Dan  Mont  joy  comes  naturally  by  his  hot  temper, 
but  for  the  most  part  he  is  a  true  Light- 
foot,  and  the  idol  of  his  grandfather's  old  age. 
But  there  comes  a  day  when  youthful  impetuosity 
leads  Dan  into  certain  foolish  escapades  that  his 
grandfather  takes  too  seriously ;  angry,  unforget 
table  words  are  exchanged,  and  the  young  man 
goes  forth  penniless,  to  fight  his  way  in  the  world 
alone,  leaving  home,  friends  and  the  girl  he  loves. 
What  he  might  have  made  of  himself  under  other 
conditions  is  a  question  that  Miss  Glasgow  does 
not  even  touch  upon;  but  it  happens  that  this 
quarrel  occurs  on  the  eve  of  the  Civil  War ;  Dan's 
secession  from  the  family  circle  coincides  with  the 
South's  withdrawal  from  the  Union.  And  so, 
throughout  the  rest  of  this  powerful  war  novel, 
we  see  a  double  struggle  waged  upon  a  double 
battle-ground — the  struggle  of  a  family  of  federal 
States  at  war  with  each  other;  and  the  struggle 
of  a  human  being  for  independence  of  the  ties 
of  blood.  And  in  the  end,  when  the  South  as  a 
whole  is  brought  to  accept  defeat,  Dan  has  learned 
still  another  and  more  personal  lesson,  and  returns 


96  ELLEN  GLASGOW 

once  more,  wiser  and  happier  with  the  sober  hap 
piness  of  maturity,  to  those  at  home  who  have 
never  ceased  to  hope  for  his  coming. 

Similarly,  in  The  Deliverance  there  is  a  double 
significance  of  title  and  of  plot.  "  After  the  bat 
tle  come  the  vultures,"  says  a  Union  soldier  in 
The  Battle-Ground — and  in  a  broad,  general  way, 
The  Deliverance  may  be  said  to  symbolize  the  suf 
ferings  of  the  South  in  the  years  immediately  fol 
lowing  the  war,  when  so  many  of  those  who  had 
constituted  the  wealth  and  pride  and  aristocracy 
of  the  country  saw  their  remaining  possessions 
wrested  from  them  by  corruption  and  by  fraud. 
Christopher  Blake  is  only  a  single  instance  of  this 
widespread  injustice  and  robbery.  He  has  seen 
his  father  die,  broken  in  body  and  in  mind;  has 
seen  the  magnificent  estate,  that  had  been  for  two 
centuries  the  property  of  the  Blakes,  sold  at  auc 
tion  and  bought  in  for  a  beggarly  sum  by  Bill 
Fletcher,  his  father's  former  overseer.  Nothing 
can  be  done  in  a  legal  way;  for  Fletcher  has 
been  careful  to  see  that  all  documents  and  account 
books  that  might  serve  as  evidence  against  him 
were  destroyed  by  fire.  Christopher,  a  mere  boy, 
with  a  crippled  mother  and  two  sisters  on  his 
hands,  finds  himself  turned  adrift,  with  no  refuge 
save  the  overseer's  former  cabin  and  a  few  acres 
of  tobacco  fields,  down  in  one  corner  of  the  estate 
which  should  have  been  his  own.  The  mother, 


ELLEN  GLASGOW  97 

paralyzed  and  blind,  is  transferred,  all  unaware 
of  the  change,  one  day  when  she  is  being  carried 
out  for  her  accustomed  airing.  Knowing  noth 
ing  of  the  fall  of  the  Confederacy,  of  the  death 
of  Lincoln,  of  the  freedom  of  the  slaves,  she  lives 
on  in  a  world  of  her  own  imaginings,  nurtured  on 
an  elaborate  tissue  of  lies,  daily  issuing  orders 
to  an  army  of  slaves  which  no  longer  exists,  and 
delicately  partaking  of  broiled  chicken  and  sip 
ping  rare  old  port,  while  her  son  and  daughters 
exist  painfully  on  hoe-cake  and  fat  bacon.  Such 
is  the  tragic  and  impressive  symbolism  by  which 
Miss  Glasgow  pictures  to  us  the  contrast  between 
the  hopes  and  the  humiliations  of  the  South.  And 
in  the  story  of  the  Blakes  we  see  not  merely  a 
single  family  tragedy,  but  behind  it  an  entire 
country  given  over  to  desolation,  with  countless 
estates  passing  into  unworthy  hands,  countless 
impoverished  families  taking  up  unaccustomed 
burdens  and  cherishing  in  their  hearts  a  mortal 
bitterness  because  of  the  dead  dream  of  the  Con 
federacy  that  refuses  to  be  forgotten.  But  in  the 
case  of  Christopher  Blake  there  is  another  and 
more  specific  story.  As  a  boy,  his  first  mad  im 
pulse  after  being  turned  from  his  home,  was  to 
murder  Fletcher;  but  the  impulse  once  checked 
has  turned  to  a  smoldering  hatred,  a  fixed  and 
secret  determination  for  revenge.  Fletcher  has 
two  grandchildren,  a  girl  and  a  boy.  The  girl, 


98  ELLEN  GLASGOW 

Maria,  marries  and  goes  abroad,  before  Christo 
pher  has  had  time  to  determine  whether  his  feel 
ing  for  her  is  hatred  or  love.  Toward  the  boy, 
Will,  he  has  but  one  feeling,  and  that  is  a  stead 
fast  longing  to  use  him  as  an  instrument  of 
vengeance.  The  boy  is  the  one  living  thing  that 
old  Fletcher  loves;  therefore,  by  making  him  a 
liar,  a  coward  and  a  drunkard,  Christopher  feels 
that  he  is  paying  back  with  interest  the  wrongs 
the  Blakes  have  suffered.  He  never  once  realizes 
the  unworthiness  of  his  own  conduct  until  Maria, 
after  some  years  of  marriage  and  widowhood,  re 
turns  home,  and  they  meet  once  more  and  realize 
the  feeling  they  had  cherished  as  boy  and  girl 
needs  only  a  word  to  make  it  flame  into  love  and 
not  hatred.  But  Christopher  has  himself  done 
a  vulture's  deed,  in  accomplishing  the  ruin  of 
Maria's  brother;  and  when  the  lad  in  a  drunken 
frenzy  kills  his  grandfather,  Christopher,  realiz 
ing  his  own  moral  responsibility,  aids  the  other 
to  escape  and  gives  himself  up  as  the  murderer. 
Deliverance  finally  comes,  so  the  book  seems  to 
preach — deliverance  of  the  land  from  vultures 
like  old  Fletcher,  deliverance  of  men  like  Chris 
topher  from  the  curse  of  their  own  mad  deeds — 
but  neither  the  one  nor  the  other  may  be  hurried ; 
they  come  only  with  patience,  in  the  fullness  of 
time. 

There  are  two  other  volumes  by  Miss  Glasgow, 


ELLEN  GLASGOW  99 

separated  by  an  interval  of  nearly  a  decade,  which 
nevertheless  deserve  to  be  analyzed  together,  be 
cause  of  the  interesting  contrast  they  afford: 
The  Voice  of  the  People  and  The  Romance  of  a 
Plain  Man.  Throughout  all  of  her  books,  one 
notices  a  theme  to  which  Miss  Glasgow  reverts 
again  and  again,  with  never-flagging  interest,  and 
that  is  the  theme  of  unequal  marriages.  Under 
the  changed  conditions  of  the  reconstruction 
period  it  was  inevitable  that  the  old  distinctions 
of  race  and  breeding,  the  old  prejudices  against 
honest  toil  and  industry  should  be  to  some  extent 
modified;  and  that  the  daughters  of  impoverished 
families  should  not  in  all  cases  think  that  they 
were  stooping  if  they  wedded  brave  and  honorable 
men  whose  fathers  perhaps  had  been  mere  plain 
tillers  of  the  soil.  This  problem,  in  its  various 
aspects,  Miss  Glasgow  has  approached  over  and 
over  again ;  but  it  is  only  in  the  two  books  now 
under  discussion  and  to  some  extent  in  her  latest 
and  maturest  volume,  The  Miller  of  Old  Church, 
that  she  has  frankly  made  it  the  central  theme. 
Far  apart  as  they  are  in  other  respects — since 
The  Voice  of  the  People  is  not  without  crudities 
of  construction,  while  The  Romance  of  a  Plain 
Man  is  with  one  exception  Miss  Glasgow's  finest 
achievement — the  two  books  offer  a  curious  par 
allel  of  plot  for  very  nearly  the  first  half  of  their 
development.  Nicholas  Burr  and  Ben  Starr  are 


100  ELLEN  GLASGOW 

both  small,  barefoot,  not  over-clean  boys  when 
they  first  meet,  in  the  one  case,  Eugenia  Battle, 
in  the  other  Sally  Mickleborough,  spick  and  span 
and  freshly  starched — and  in  each  case  the  small 
girl  makes  the  small  boy  exceedingly  uncom 
fortable  by  declaring  that  she  cannot  play  with 
him  because  he  is  "  common."  In  each  case  the 
childish  insult  fires  a  latent  ambition ;  Nicholas 
Burr  confides  to  kindly  old  Judge  Bassett  his  se 
cret  hope  of  some  day  becoming  a  judge;  and  Ben 
Starr  similarly  owns  to  General  Bolingbroke,  who 
happens  to  be  president  of  the  Great  South  Mid 
land  and  Atlantic  Railroad,  his  own  determination 
to  work  his  way  up  eventually  to  the  presidency  of 
that  same  road.  In  each  case  the  boy's  ambition 
both  amuses  and  pleases  the  busy  man,  and  in 
each  case  the  boy's  education  is  cared  for,  his  way 
made  smooth,  and  the  first  steps  toward  his  ulti 
mate  goal  are  guided  by  a  wise  and  protecting 
hand.  And  in  the  later  book  Sally  Mickleborough 
is  brought  to  acknowledge,  precisely  as  Eugenia 
Battle  acknowledges  in  the  earlier,  that  "  com 
mon  "  was  a  mistaken  and  an  unjust  word,  and 
that  she  is  glad  and  proud  to  give  her  heart  and 
hand  to  the  man  who  has  already  achieved  so 
much  for  her  sake.  But  here  the  two  books  part 
company.  In  each  of  them  the  pride  of  the  girl's 
family  forms  an  almost  insurmountable  barrier; 
in  each  of  them  there  is  another  man  who  by  birth, 


ELLEN  GLASGOW  101 

fortune  and  education  seems  expressly  designed 
for  the  girl's  husband.  In  the  earlier  book  Miss 
Glasgow  decides  that  between  Nick  Burr  and  Eu 
genia  Battle  there  is  too  great  a  gulf  ever  to 
be  bridged  over  even  by  love;  a  stray  scrap  of 
scandal  touching  him,  too  hastily  believed  in  by 
her,  estranges  them  permanently ;  she  marries  the 
man  in  her  own  class,  while  he  goes  on  doggedly 
climbing  the  rungs  of  the  political  ladder,  to  his 
final  goal  as  governor  of  the  State.  The  voice 
of  the  people,  through  the  ballot,  has  given  him 
his  political  ambition ;  the  voice  of  the  people, 
through  the  tongue  of  scandal,  robbed  him  of  mar 
ried  happiness ;  the  voice  of  the  people,  through 
the  mad  frenzy  of  a  mob,  bent  upon  lynching  a 
negro  whom  he,  as  governor,  has  sworn  to  give  a 
fair  trial,  robs  him  of  his  life.  And  the  woman 
lives  on,  in  a  marriage  that  has  brought  neither 
joy  nor  sorrow,  finding  her  only  real  emotion  in 
the  cares  of  motherhood. 

The  Romance  of  a  Plam  Man  is  a  book  as  much 
bigger  and  stronger  as  a  decade  of  steady  growth 
can  well  make  it.  To  begin  with,  Miss  Glasgow 
has  realized  that  such  a  story,  concerning  itself 
mainly  with  the  inward  growth  of  a  man's  char 
acter,  has  everything  to  gain  and  nothing  to  lose 
by  being  seen  through  the  man's  eyes.  Therefore, 
she  tells  it  in  the  first  person.  Secondly,  she  re 
alizes  that  when  two  people  care  for  each  other 


102  ELLEN  GLASGOW 

with  the  fierce,  unreasoning  passion  either  of  Nick 
and  Eugenia  or  of  Ben  and  Sally,  they  are  not 
likely  to  let  either  small  obstacles  or  great  ones 
come  between  them ;  that  they  will  brush  aside  en 
treaties,  warnings  and  commands,  and  take  their 
chances  of  being  either  supremely  happy  or  ut 
terly  miserable.  In  the  marriage  of  Ben  Starr 
and  Sally  Mickleborough  the  author,  if  we  rightly 
understand  her,  wishes  to  show  how  difficult  it 
is  for  a  man  sprung  from  a  humble  and  rather 
vulgar  source  to  understand  the  finer  feelings  of 
those  more  gently  born.  For  Sally's  sake  Ben 
Starr  wants  wealth  and  education  and  power;  and 
for  her  sake  he  wins  them,  rapidly,  surely  and  with 
apparent  ease.  He  wants  them  first  to  prove  to 
her  that  he  is  not  "  common  " ;  and  afterward, 
having  won  her  in  defiance  of  her  family  and  her 
social  world,  he  continues  to  strive  for  more 
money,  more  power,  more  positions  of  trust,  al 
ways  with  a  fixed  idea  that  they  will  bring  her 
greater  happiness.  And  here  is  where  he  makes 
his  one  great  mistake,  that  almost  wrecks  their 
married  life  in  mid-course.  He  does  not  realize 
that  his  absorption  in  the  big  game  of  finance 
leaves  him  little  time  even  to  think  of  his  wife, 
and  none  at  all  to  place  at  her  service.  Because 
the  obvious  difference  between  himself  and  the  men 
in  Sally's  own  class  is  money  and  position  and 
education,  he  makes  the  natural  mistake  of  think- 


ELLEN  GLASGOW  103 

ing  that  the  attainment  and  possession  of  these 
things  is  in  itself  the  key  to  social  equality,  the 
one  thing  essential  to  his  happiness  and  hers.  And 
the  last  and  most  important  lesson  in  his  whole 
course  of  self-education  he  is  slow  in  learning — 
that  the  essential  thing  does  not  lie  in  these 
achievements  but  behind  them — it  lies  in  a  man's 
power  to  mold  his  own  character  until  he  is  ca 
pable  of  attaining  his  goal.  It  is  not  a  bank  ac 
count,  nor  a  directorship  in  a  railway,  nor  social 
recognition,  nor  a  knowledge  of  the  Odes  of 
Horace  that  in  themselves  win  and  hold  the  love 
of  a  woman  like  Sally  Mickleborough ;  but  with 
out  the  energy  and  persistence  to  compass  these 
things,  Ben  Starr  would  not  have  been  the  kind 
of  man  to  win  her.  But  having  once  won  her, 
though  he  should  lose  his  money,  forget  his  Latin, 
find  himself  under  a  social  cloud,  she  is  the  sort 
of  woman  who  will  cling  all  the  more  loyally — and 
with  feminine  illogic  be  the  happier  for  serving 
him.  This  lesson  Ben  Starr  might  have  learned 
early  in  their  married  life,  during  temporary  re 
verses,  when  for  some  weeks  Sally  is  slowly  nurs 
ing  him  back  to  health  after  a  desperate  illness, 
and  incidentally  earning  their  daily  bread  with 
her  own  frail,  unaccustomed  hands.  Had  he  been 
less  of  a  "  plain  "  man,  and  gifted  with  a  little 
more  subtlety,  he  would  have  seen  that  for  these 
few  weeks  they  were  nearer  to  true  happiness  than 


104  ELLEN  GLASGOW 

at  any  time  before.  But  as  a  matter  of  fact  he 
does  not  see,  but  goes  on  toiling,  amassing,  reach 
ing  out  for  more  power,  more  fame,  and  year  by 
year  approaching  his  boyhood's  ambition,  the 
presidency  of  the  Great  South  Midland  and  At 
lantic  Railroad.  And  at  last  it  is  only  under 
the  stress  of  a  great  sorrow  and  a  greater 
fear;  only  when  he  sees  his  wife's  life  trembling 
in  the  balance,  that  this  essentially  plain  man  re 
ceives  enlightenment,  and  realizes  that  the  path 
to  happiness  may  lie  through  the  deliberate  sacri 
fice  of  a  life-long  ambition. 

Such  in  brief  is  the  substance  of  The  Romance 
of  a  Plain  Man,  which  at  the  time  of  its  publica 
tion  two  years  ago  was  easily  Miss  Glasgow's 
most  thoughtful,  most  mature  and  altogether  big 
gest  novel.  It  is  a  peculiarly  American  novel, 
since  it  symbolizes  with  a  subtlety  that  is  essen 
tially  feminine  and  a  force  that  is  almost  virile 
the  practical  limitations  of  the  doctrine  that  all 
men  are  born  free  and  equal.  It  was  quite  natural 
that,  in  reading  it,  one  should  say:  In  this  book 
Miss  Glasgow  has  come  to  full  maturity ;  she  may 
give  us  many  other  volumes  worthy  of  a  place 
beside  it,  but  surely  nothing  better  or  stronger ! 
But  in  The  Miller  of  Old  Church  she  has  climbed 
to  a  still  higher  level,  because  never  before  has 
she  succeeded  in  being  at  once  so  pre-eminently 
local  and  so  universal  in  her  appeal.  Old  Church 


ELLEN  GLASGOW  105 

deserves  to  become  one  of  those  historic  landmarks 
in  fiction,  with  a  physiognomy  and  an  individu 
ality  as  unmistakable  as  George  Eliot's  St.  Oggs, 
and  Thomas  Hardy's  Wessex.  Yet  the  under 
lying  problem,  while  presenting  a  certain  surface 
newness,  is  in  reality  not  peculiar  to  Old  Church, 
or  to  Virginia,  or  to  the  New  South,  but  is  as  old 
as  civilization  itself.  It  is  new  to  this  extent  only : 
that  the  specific  conditions  which  determine  its 
episodes  are  of  recent  origin,  forming  a  definite 
stage  in  the  slow  transition  in  Southern  social  and 
economic  life  that  began  with  the  reconstruction 
period  and  is  not  yet  ended.  But  in  its  essence 
Miss  Glasgow's  theme  is  nothing  more  nor  less 
than  that  of  the  universal  and  inevitable  struggle 
of  the  lower  classes  to  rise,  and  the  jealousy  of 
caste  that  would  hold  them  back  if  it  could — and 
it  is  precisely  the  universality  of  the  theme, 
studied  under  vividly  local  conditions,  that  gives 
to  the  book  a  large  degree  of  its  vitality  and 
strength.  The  central  human  story  of  The  Miller 
of  Old  Church  has  to  do  with  the  complex  fortunes 
of  Molly  Merryweather,  the  illegitimate  daughter 
of  Janet  Merryweather  and  Jonathan  Gay,  both 
of  whom  have  been  dead  many  years  before  the 
opening  of  the  story.  Janet  Merryweather  be 
longed  to  that  humble  and  despised  division  of  the 
white  race  in  the  South  which  even  the  negroes  felt 
at  liberty  to  look  down  upon ;  "  before  the  war  one 


106  ELLEN  GLASGOW 

hardly  ever  heard  of  that  class,  it  was  so  humble 
and  unpresuming."  Jonathan  Gay,  on  the  con 
trary,  was  of  the  aristocracy ;  the  Gays  of  Jor 
dan's  Journey  were  easily  the  dominant  social 
power  of  the  neighborhood.  At  heart  Jonathan 
sincerely  loved  Janet;  he  had  meant  to  deal  with 
her  honestly,  and  he  would  have  been  glad  to  make 
reparation  by  marrying  her.  But  it  was  at  this 
crucial  time  that  Angela  Gay,  Jonathan's  wid 
owed  sister-in-law,  came  to  make  her  home  with 
him.  Now  Angela  was  one  of  those  frail, 
ephemeral,  flower-like  women,  who  keep  their  fam 
ily,  friends  and  medical  adviser  in  a  state  of 
chronic  anxiety,  and  tyrannize  over  the  home 
circle  with  a  strength  born  of  their  weakness.  In 
fact,  it  was  tacitly  understood  that  Angela  was 
not  long  for  this  world,  and  that  everything  and 
everybody  must  be  sacrificed  in  order  to  spare  her 
agitation  and  guard  against  a  strain  upon  her 
dangerously  fluttering  heart.  In  a  vague  way, 
Angela  knew  about  Jonathan's  irregularities  of 
life;  but  according  to  the  standards  of  her  sta 
tion  and  her  epoch  they  were  matters  which  a 
woman  of  refinement  could  not  allow  to  be  men 
tioned  in  her  presence :  "  it  was  part  of  her  sweet 
ness  that  she  never  faced  an  unpleasant  fact  until 
it  was  literally  thrust  upon  her  notice."  Conse 
quently  when  Jonathan  tried  gently  to  break  to 
her  the  idea  that  he  was  half -inclined  to  marry 


ELLEN  GLASGOW  107 

Janet,  Angela  made  it  plain  to  him  that  for  a  Gay 
so  to  demean  himself  would  be  equivalent  to  a 
death  blow  to  her.  Janet's  shame,  insanity  and 
early  death  distressed  Angela  in  a  vague  way; 
but  marriage  would  have  been  something  a  thou 
sand  times  worse,  a  stupendous,  unimaginable  ca 
lamity.  So  Jonathan,  not  dreaming  that  Angela 
would  outlive  him,  contented  himself  with  leaving 
a  secret  bequest  and  a  paper  acknowledging  Molly 
as  his  daughter, — all  of  which  was  to  be  made 
public  only  when  the  girl  should  reach  the  age 
of  twenty-one.  He  did  not  foresee  that  the  be 
lated  revelation  would  fall  all  the  more  heavily, 
because  of  the  delay,  upon  the  fragile  woman  to 
whom  he  had  sacrificed  his  own  happiness.  Now, 
at  the  opening  of  the  story  all  this  is  ancient  his 
tory:  Molly  is  on  the  threshold  of  womanhood. 
She  has  ripened  into  great  beauty  and  is  eagerly 
sought  after  by  the  young  men  of  the  new  order, 
— the  order,  as  one  character  phrases  it,  "  that  is 
rapidly  forging  to  the  surface  and  pushing  us  di 
lapidated  aristocrats  out  of  the  way," — but  by  no 
one  more  eagerly  than  by  Abel  Revercomb,  the 
miller  of  Old  Church.  Now  it  happens  that  Jona 
than  Gay  the  younger,  Angela's  only  son,  after 
long  years  of  absence  in  the  North,  at  last  comes 
to  Jordan's  Journey,  "  to  see  for  himself  how  she 
can  stand  it."  Almost  the  first  person  he  meets 
is  Molly ;  and  her  beauty  and  tragic  history  kindle 


108  ELLEN  GLASGOW 

so  quick  an  interest  that  ancient  wrongs  seem  to 
have  a  prospect  of  being  at  last  set  right.  And 
so  they  might  have  been,  in  spite  of  Molly's 
avowed  hatred  of  men,  but  for  the  fatal  circum 
stance  that  before  meeting  Molly  he  had  lost  his 
way  while  taking  a  short-cut  across  lots,  had  been 
set  on  his  right  path  again  by  Blossom  Rever- 
comb,  and  learned  that  "  not  his  philosophy,  but 
the  little  brown  mole  on  a  woman's  cheek  stood  for 
destiny."  Jonathan  is  a  true  Gay  by  nature ;  and 
"  a  Gay  will  go  on  ogling  the  sex  as  long  as  he 
is  able  to  totter  back  from  the  edge  of  the  grave." 
All  the  time  that  he  is  openly  paying  court  to 
Molly  Merryweather  and  goading  the  miller  into 
sullen  jealousy,  he  is  secretly  meeting  Blossom 
Revercomb,  the  miller's  sister,  and  the  old-time 
tragedy  bids  fair  to  be  re-enacted.  There  has 
been  an  ancient  feud  between  the  Gays  and  the 
Revercombs, — in  fact,  it  is  current  gossip  that  the 
shot  which  killed  the  elder  Jonathan  ten  years 
earlier  was  fired  by  Uncle  Abner  Revercomb,  who 
had  never  been  quite  sound  in  mind  since  the  old 
days  when  the  sweetheart  of  his  youth,  Janet 
Merryweather,  was  lost  to  him;  and  when  he 
learns  of  the  clandestine  meetings  between  his 
niece  and  the  younger  Jonathan,  he  takes  the  law 
once  more  into  his  own  hands,  and  by  the  death  of 
another  Gay  squares  a  long-standing  account. 
So  much  of  the  bare  plot  of  The  Miller  of  Old 


ELLEN  GLASGOW  109 

Church  it  has  seemed  necessary  to  tell  in  detail,  in 
order  to  understand  the  symbolic  meaning  behind 
it.  Of  the  subordinate  stories,  the  secondary  in 
terests,  the  complex,  interwoven  threads  that  make 
this  volume  a  richly  embroidered  piece  of  living 
tapestry,  it  is  impossible  to  take  notice  here,  with 
out  risk  of  blurring  outlines  and  confusing  mo 
tives.  It  seems  almost  a  pity  that  it  is  necessary 
to  lay  such  special  stress  upon  the  bare  skeleton 
of  a  book  which,  considered  as  a  human  story 
rather  than  an  ethical  problem,  finds  its  main  in 
terest  less  in  the  sheer  narrative  than  in  the  atmos 
phere  of  a  unique  locality  and  the  intimate  con 
cerns  of  a  group  of  people  whom  we  grow  to  love 
in  a  very  personal  way  on  account  of  their  Stirling 
merits  or  rare  whimsicalities.  But  it  was  neces 
sary  to  get  the  bare  framework  of  the  book  clearly 
in  mind,  and  for  the  following  reason :  without  so 
doing,  we  could  not  understand  the  masterly  way 
in  which  Miss  Glasgow  has  here  once  again  em 
ployed  the  epic  method.  In  the  broadest  sense 
this  book  is  not  so  much  the  history  of  Molly 
Merryweather  as  it  is  the  story  of  the  New  South. 
The  various  factors  that  tend  either  to  hasten  or 
retard  development  are  personified  one  by  one  in 
the  several  characters  of  this  little  local  drama. 
In  Angela,  for  instance,  we  have  the  incarnate 
spirit  of  the  old-time  Southern  aristocracy,  with 
its  pride  and  its  traditions, — sorely  stricken  since 


110  ELLEN  GLASGOW 

the  war;  moribund,  yet  still  clinging  to  life  with 
the  amazing  tenacity  of  chronic  invalidism.  In 
the  older  Jonathan,  we  have  the  bygone  type  of 
the  reckless,  devil-may-care,  hot-blooded  South 
erner,  who  at  any  cost  would  maintain  his  fam 
ily  standards  and  traditions ;  and  in  the  younger 
Jonathan  and  Abel  Revercomb  we  have  respect 
ively  the  new  dignity  of  labor  and  the  new  and 
broader  tolerance  of  gentle  breeding.  And  lastly, 
if  we  read  Miss  Glasgow's  purpose  rightly,  we 
have  in  Molly  Merryweather  herself  the  future  so 
lution  of  the  social  problem.  In  her  origin  and 
in  her  character,  Molly  represents  a  mixture  of 
two  natures,  a  compromise  between  the  upper  class 
and  the  lower,  combining  the  better  qualities  of 
each;  furthermore,  she  typifies  a  social  intermin 
gling  which,  a  generation  earlier,  was  not  to  be 
thought  of,  but  which  to-day,  owing  to  changed 
conditions,  has  come  more  and  more  to  be  tol 
erated.  In  other  words  the  stigma  of  the  girl's 
illegitimacy  stands  as  a  symbol  of  the  social 
ostracism  of  the  poorer  whites,  even  for  many 
years  after  the  war;  and  her  belated  recognition 
by  her  father's  people,  in  consequence  of  his  post 
humous  acknowledgment  of  her,  symbolizes  the 
reluctance  with  which  the  social  barriers  begin  to 
yield.  And  even  Molly's  marriage  has  its  deeper, 
hidden  significance:  even  had  Jonathan  lived,  she 
would  not  have  married  him,  the  representative  of 


ELLEN  GLASGOW  111 

an  effete  social  code;  she  would  inevitably  have 
taken  the  man  whom  she  did  take,  the  sturdy 
Miller  of  Old  Church, — because  the  younger  so 
ciety  of  the  New  South  is  destined  more  and  more 
to  recruit  itself  from  the  vigorous  ranks  of  the 
rising  democracy.  Such  at  least  is  what  Miss 
Glasgow  seems  to  have  set  herself  to  say, — and 
in  this  it  is  not  easy  for  the  reader  to  misun 
derstand  her;  for  she  has  said  it  with  a  courage, 
a  clearness  and  a  strength  of  conviction  that  make 
it  easily  her  best  book,  her  wisest  book,  the  book 
that  amply  justifies  the  most  sanguine  prophecies 
of  those  who  have  had  an  abiding  faith  in  her. 


DAVID  GRAHAM  PHILLIPS 

IN  any  critical  analysis  of  the  life  work  of  the 
late  David  Graham  Phillips,  it  is  well  to  recognize 
frankly  at  the  outset  that  he  has  been  a  rather 
important  figure  in  the  development  of  American 
fiction  in  recent  years.  We  could  name  on  the 
fingers  of  one  hand  the  contemporary  novelists 
who,  like  Mr.  Phillips,  have  devoted  themselves  to 
depicting  and  studying  the  big  ethical  and  social 
problems  of  their  own  country  and  generation, 
and  doing  it  in  a  broad,  bold,  comprehensive  way, 
with  a  certain  epic  sweep  and  magnitude.  And 
among  these  few  none  was  more  deeply  in  earnest 
than  Mr.  Phillips,  none  strove  more  patiently  to 
do  his  work  in  the  best,  most  forceful,  most  crafts 
man-like  manner.  Having  made  these  concessions, 
we  are  free  to  recognize  that  his  results  fell  some 
what  behind  his  intentions,  that  with  all  his  in 
dustry  he  developed  his  technique  rather  slowly, 
and  that  while  just  a  few  of  his  novels  are  of  a 
quality  which  no  serious  student  of  present-day 
fiction  can  afford  to  neglect,  a  large  proportion 
of  the  remainder  may  conveniently  be  set  aside  as 
merely  tending  to  increase  the  bulk  of  a  critical 
113 


DAVID  GRAHAM  PHILLIPS 


DAVID  GRAHAM  PHILLIPS         113 

analysis  without  contributing  any  light  of  real 
importance. 

Now,  in  saying  that  Mr.  Phillips  was  slow  in 
acquiring  the  technique  of  construction,  it  be 
hooves  a  critic  to  define  rather  carefully  just 
wherein  he  showed  himself  defective.  It  certainly 
was  not  due  to  any  lack  of  willingness  or  ability 
to  practise  infinite  pains.  On  the  contrary,  the 
habit  of  making  the  act  of  writing  a  slow  and  con 
scientious  toil  grew  upon  him  year  by  year.  Few 
novelists  of  his  degree  of  success  have  accepted 
adverse  criticism  in  a  more  tolerant  spirit;  but 
there  was  one  thing  that  he  resented,  and  that  was 
the  charge  of  careless  haste.  "  People  sometimes 
say  that  I  write  too  fast,"  he  protested  not  long 
before  his  death.  "  They  said  so  about  my  Light- 
Fingered  Gentry.  They  don't  know  anything 
about  it !  I  don't  believe  any  one  ever  wrote  more 
slowly  and  laboriously.  Every  one  of  my  books 

was  written  at  least  three  times "     He  paused 

a  moment,  then  added  in  correction,  "  And  when 
I  say  three  times,  it  really  means  nine  times,  on 
account  of  my  system  of  copying  and  revision." 
When  once  under  full  headway  in  a  book,  he 
worked  immoderately,  producing  an  actual  bulk 
of  material  far  in  excess  of  what  was  needed  for 
the  limits  of  the  story.  "  I  have  writer's  cramp 
every  spring,"  he  said  with  a  laugh.  As  he  be 
came  better  acquainted  with  the  characters  and 


114         DAVID  GRAHAM  PHILLIPS 

situations  in  a  book,  his  great  difficulty  lay  in 
confining  himself  to  such  details  as  were  strictly 
relevant  to  his  central  purpose.  He  was  hampered 
by  knowing  too  much  about  his  people,  their 
habits  of  life  and  methods  of  thought.  They  were 
all  the  time  taking  matters  into  their  own  hands, 
and  insisting  upon  his  setting  down  upon  paper 
all  sorts  of  happenings  quite  extraneous  to  the 
story.  According  to  his  own  estimate,  he  usually 
ended  by  discarding,  not  only  in  paragraphs  and 
episodes,  but  also  in  whole  chapters,  from  two  to 
three  times  as  much  as  he  retained  in  the  published 
volume. 

Nor  are  his  faults  of  construction  due  to  a  lack 
of  acquaintance  with  the  best  methods  of  the  mod 
ern  schools  of  fiction,  abroad  as  well  as  at  home. 
There  are  certain  qualities  in  his  later  volumes, 
such  as  Old  Wives  for  New  and  The  Second  Gen 
eration,  which  are  to  be  explained  only  through 
the  influence  of  the  best  French  realism — qualities 
which,  on  the  one  hand,  are  not  the  result  of  a 
conscious  and  deliberate  imitation ;  but  on  the 
other,  cannot  possibly  have  been  an  independent 
and  spontaneous  creation.  The  broad,  Zolaesque 
sweep  of  phrase  and  action,  the  sense  of  jostling 
crowds  and  ceaseless  activity,  the  endless  pano 
rama  of  city  streets,  the  whole  trick  of  treating 
humanity  in  ranks  and  battalions,  as  though  the 
crowd  were  a  natural  unit  of  measurement, — these 


DAVID  GRAHAM  PHILLIPS         115 

are  things  which  Mr.  Phillips  learned  to  do  as 
just  a  few  other  American  writers,  Frank  Norris, 
for  instance,  and  Robert  Herrick,  have  learned 
to  do  them:  and  necessarily  he  must  have  studied 
at  the  fountain  head.  Indeed,  his  whole  concep 
tion  of  what  a  novel  should  be  was  French  rather 
than  Anglo-Saxon.  When  one  discussed  with  him 
about  theories  of  fiction  he  would  admit  frankly, 
on  the  one  hand,  that  he  had  small  use  for  such 
artificial  devices  for  giving  unity  to  a  series  of 
volumes  as  Balzac's  scheme  of  the  Comedie  Hu- 
maine  or  Zola's  complicated  family  tree  of  the 
Rougon-Macquart.  But  he  did  insist  upon  seeing 
every  human  story  as  a  cross-section  of  life;  and 
by  a  cross-section  of  life  he  did  not  mean  a  little 
local  slice  carefully  measured  to  fit  the  dimensions 
of  the  particular  story  he  happened  to  be  tell 
ing.  On  the  contrary,  if  he  was  narrating  the 
simple  love  affair  of  a  boy  and  girl  in  some  small 
town  of  the  Middle  West,  he  was  always  conscious, 
even  though  he  had  no  need  of  bringing  this  out 
in  the  story,  that  there  was  between  that  boy  and 
girl  and  all  the  other  people  in  that  town  an  in 
evitable  and  all-pervading  human  relationship; 
that  that  town  was  not  an  isolated  community, 
but  was  itself  only  a  link  in  the  vast  network  of 
social  and  industrial  life  stretching  over  the  wide 
continent  from  the  Atlantic  to  the  Pacific,  with 
endless  miles  of  railroad  intersecting  it,  with  a 


116         DAVID  GRAHAM  PHILLIPS 

centralized  government,  a  President  and  Congress 
at  Washington  and  with  countless  lines  of  steam 
ers  keeping  it  in  touch  with  the  other  world 
powers.  All  this  helps  in  a  measure  to  show  what 
to  Mr.  Phillips  was  a  very  vivid  actuality.  And 
of  course  the  writer  who  always  sees  each  little 
human  happening,  not  as  an  isolated  incident  but 
as  a  detail  in  a  tremendous  and  universal  scheme, 
necessarily  has  a  wider  outlook  upon  life  and 
necessarily  communicates  to  his  readers  a  similar 
impression  of  bigness  and  of  vitality. 

This  brings  us  directly  to  the  question :  Why  is 
it  that  so  many  of  Mr.  Phillips's  books  contain 
more  of  promise  than  of  fulfilment?  Why  is  it 
that,  starting  as  they  do  with  big  ethical  problems 
and  a  broad  epic  treatment,  they  are  so  apt  at 
the  end  to  leave  rather  the  impression  of  having 
given  us  an  isolated  and  exceptional  human  story 
than  of  having  symbolized  some  broad  and  uni 
versal  principle?  The  answer,  I  think,  is  simply 
this :  that  there  was  a  curious  anomaly  in  the  man 
ner  in  which  Mr.  Phillips's  mind  worked  when  in 
quest  of  the  germ  idea  of  a  new  story.  In  spite 
of  the  fact  that  his  instinct  led  him  to  write  pur 
pose  novels,  and  that  his  interest  in  social  and 
economic  problems  was  in  some  respects  keener 
than  his  interest  in  people;  yet,  according  to  his 
own  admission,  no  story  ever  began  to  shape  itself 
in  his  mind  in  the  form  of  an  abstract  principle, 


DAVID  GRAHAM  PHILLIPS         117 

an  ethical  doctrine.  Reversing  the  usual  process 
followed  by  writers  of  the  epic  type,  he  always 
started  from  a  single  character  or  episode  and 
built  from  these, — sometimes  indeed  from  nothing 
more  definite  than  a  face  glimpsed  for  a  moment 
in  a  crowd.  A  striking  case  in  point  is  the  origin 
that  he  assigned  to  one  of  the  novels  left  unpub 
lished  at  the  time  of  his  death.  The  theme  of  this 
story  was  the  outgrowth  of  Mr.  Phillips's  deep 
interest  in  the  economic  independence  of  the  mod 
ern  woman,  and  more  especially  in  the  peculiar 
dangers  and  temptations  which  beset  her,  as  con 
trasted  with  the  more  sheltered  lives  of  her  mother 
and  grandmother.  He  had  been  deeply  stirred  by 
recent  statistics  regarding  the  influx  of  refined 
young  Southern  women  into  New  York,  so  many 
of  them  fated  to  be  swept  under  by  the  surge  of 
city  life.  He  wanted  to  know  whether  such  a 
girl  could,  by  her  own  efforts,  struggle  up,  out 
of  the  depths,  to  a  position  of  independence  and 
social  standing.  Such,  in  substance,  is  the  longest 
book  that  Mr.  Phillips  ever  wrote,  a  book  that 
in  the  form  in  which  he  left  it  ran  to  considerably 
more  than  three  hundred  thousand  words.  The 
title  of  the  book  has  not  yet  been  made  public ; 
but  it  is  probably  safe  to  conjecture  that  it  is 
the  volume  which  he  intended  to  call  Susan.  At 
all  events,  it  is  utterly  unlike  any  of  his  previous 
efforts,  and  the  author  himself  confessed  that  it 


118        DAVID  GRAHAM  PHILLIPS 

baffled  his  powers  of  self-criticism.  But,  like  all 
his  other  books,  it  received  its  first  impetus,  not 
from  economics,but  from  a  trivial  incident: namely, 
a  passing  glimpse  of  a  young  woman  seated  in  a 
wagon. 

The  incident  in  question  occurred  when  the 
author  was  a  lad  of  fourteen.  It  was  in  a  West 
ern  town,  where  he  chanced  to  be  staying  at  the 
time;  and  the  face  of  the  young  woman  in  the 
farm-wagon  haunted  him  long  afterward.  It  was 
a  beautiful  face,  a  face  indicating  breeding  and 
culture,  but  it  bore  the  stamp  of  dumb,  hopeless 
tragedy.  As  he  stood  gazing  at  her,  a  gaunt, 
elderly  man,  rugged  and  toil-stained,  with  the 
hall-mark  of  the  well-to-do  farmer  plainly  visible 
upon  him,  climbed  to  the  seat  beside  her,  gathered 
up  the  reins  and  drove  off.  Mr.  Phillips,  boy 
though  he  was,  noticed  how  the  girl  shrank  and 
whitened  as  her  companion's  shoulder  touched  her. 
He  heard  the  girl's  story  afterward.  She  be 
longed  to  a  family  of  local  prominence ;  but  there 
had  been  a  scandal,  sordid,  notorious,  unforget 
table.  The  girl  herself  was  probably  the  one  per 
son  in  the  community  who  did  not  know  the  facts. 
She  could  not  understand  why  her  people  were 
shunned  socially,  nor  why  they  welcomed  the 
chance  of  providing  for  her  by  marriage  with  an 
illiterate  but  prosperous  old  fanner,  who  lived  at 
a  desirable  distance  from  town.  The  girl's  story 


DAVID  GRAHAM  PHILLIPS         119 

has  nothing  to  do  with  Mr.  Phillips's  novel,  but 
the  suffering  on  her  face  was  his  inspiration  after 
the  lapse  of  a  quarter-century. 

It  is  the  logical  result  of  Mr.  Phillips's  method 
of  working  from  the  concrete  to  the  abstract, 
from  the  specific  to  the  general,  that  his  big  un 
derlying  principle,  whatever  it  may  be,  is  never 
personified  with  that  graphic  visualization  that 
makes  it  everywhere  and  at  all  times  loom  up  por 
tentously,  as,  for  instance,  in  Zola's  L'Argent, 
the  Bourse  looms  up,  in  Le  Venire  de  Paris,  the 
Halles,  in  L'Assommoir,  the  Wine-shop,  like  so 
many  vast  symbolic  monsters  wreaking  their  ma 
lignant  pleasure  upon  mankind.  In  Mr.  Phillips's 
books  one  feels  the  ethical  purpose  far  more 
vaguely ;  he  is  always  stimulating,  he  sets  us 
thinking  deeply  over  big  problems — most  deeply, 
perhaps,  when  he  most  strongly  antagonizes  us; 
but  it  is  difficult  to  say  with  precision,  or,  at  all 
events,  to  say  within  the  limits  of  ten  words  just 
what  principle  any  one  book  of  his  stands  for. 
Take,  for  instance,  the  best  and  strongest  of  all 
his  books,  The  Husband's  Story:  even  here  the 
general  public  has  groped  rather  helplessly  to  de 
cide  just  what  the  author  meant.  It  must  be  ad 
mitted  that  on  the  whole  the  general  public  has  in 
this  particular  case  been  rather  stupid  in  failing 
to  recognize  that  when  Mr.  Phillips  chose  to  see 
this  particular  story  through  the  eyes  of  a  cer- 


120         DAVID  GRAHAM  PHILLIPS 

tain  shrewd  and  unscrupulous  financier,  he  de 
prived  himself  of  the  chance  of  expressing  his  own 
ideas  directly,  and  was  obliged  to  give  us  every 
detail  strongly  colored  by  its  passage  through  an 
other  man's  temperament.  Nevertheless,  it  is 
undoubtedly  to  some  extent  Mr.  Phillips's  own 
fault  that  a  majority  of  his  readers  assumed  that 
The  Husband's  Story  was  an  indictment  of  the 
American  woman  as  a  whole,  and  not  simply  of  one 
limited  and  ultra-snobbish  type  of  American  woman. 
And  the  same  question  of  his  meaning  is  raised 
with  considerably  more  justice  in  every  one  of 
his  earlier  books.  Is  Old  Wives  for  New  a  protest 
against  girl-and-boy  marriages,  or  an  indorse 
ment  of  divorce,  or  both?  Is  The  Hungry  Heart 
an  arraignment  of  the  Doll's  House  treatment  of 
a  wife,  or  a  plea  for  equal  standards  for  man  and 
woman  in  questions  of  morality?  And  is  The 
Second  Generation  to  be  taken  mainly  as  a  pro 
test  against  inherited  fortunes,  a  glorification  of 
work,  or  as  a  satire  upon  the  snobbery  of  America's 
idle  class?  In  other  words,  had  Zola  written  this 
book,  would  his  symbol  for  it  have  been  the  Pro 
bate  Court,  the  Dinner  Pail,  or  the  Powdered 
Flunkey?  It  was  part  and  parcel  of  Mr.  Phil 
lips's  habitual  tendency  to  see  his  cross-section  of 
life  in  its  entirety,  that  he  found  himself  unable 
to  do  one  thing  at  a  time,  found  himself  obliged 
to  complicate  and  obscure  his  central  purpose  by 


having    in    reality    several    simultaneous    central 
purposes. 

This  brings  us  face  to  face  with  the  real  fault 
of  Mr.  Phillips's  method  of  work,  the  real  weak 
ness  of  even  his  best  achievements.  He  was  not 
merely  the  clear-eyed  and  impartial  observer  of 
life;  he  was  always  a  partisan  and  a  reformer. 
His  interest  was  so  keen  in  the  problems  he  was 
seeking  to  set  forth  that  he  found  it  impossible 
to  keep  himself  and  his  ideas  out  of  them.  Of 
course  when  you  take  one  of  Mr.  Phillips's  nov 
els  to  pieces  you  discover  that  in  its  essence  it  is 
a  problem  novel ;  but  this  side  of  his  work  he  had 
learned  to  disguise  pretty  cleverly.  It  is  not  so 
much  the  way  in  which  he  twisted  the  lives  of  his 
characters  in  order  to  point  a  moral,  as  it  is  the 
slight  running  comment  going  all  through  the 
narrative  portions  of  his  stories  that  keeps  us  re 
minded  both  of  his  personal  outlook  upon  life  and 
of  the  annoying  fact  that  he  is  trying  to  do  our 
thinking  for  us.  Here,  for  instance,  is  a  trivial 
little  example  that  may  stand  as  typical  of  his 
method:  in  White  Magic  he  had  occasion  to  tell 
us,  as  evidence  of  the  expensive  scale  on  which 
his  heroine's  mother  ran  her  summer  home,  that 
she  had  no  less  than  five  footmen  in  attendance 
at  the  front  door.  Now,  some  of  us  may  think 
this  mere  foolishness;  others  may  wax  indignant 
over  it  as  a  criminal  extravagance;  and  others 


122         DAVID  GRAHAM  PHILLIPS 

again  simply  regard  it  as  no  more  than  what  was 
proper  for  a  person  in  her  position  of  life.  Mr. 
Phillips  had  as  good  a  right  as  anybody  else 
to  his  own  opinion  about  it,  but  it  was  not  good 
art  for  him  to  force  that  opinion  upon  the  reader 
by  couching  this  little  fact  in  the  following  terms : 
"  Five  lackeys  .  .  .  five  strapping  fellows  with 
dumb  faces  and  the  stalwart  figures  that  the  rich 
select  as  menial  show  pieces."  There  is  a  veiled 
sneer  in  the  very  intonation  of  such  a  sentence 
that  is  incompatible  with  the  best  art. 

It  is  this  uncontrolled  tendency  to  inject  the 
personal  equation  into  his  books  that  every  now 
and  then  sets  the  reader  tingling  with  sudden  an 
tagonism  in  the  midst  of  some  of  his  strongest 
scenes.  His  outlook  upon  life  was  extremely  clear- 
eyed  and  broad;  and  if  he  had  been  content  to 
give  us  the  uncolorcd  facts  and  let  us  think  what 
we  would  about  them,  we  should  get  considerably 
more  benefit  as  well  as  enjoyment  out  of  contact 
with  his  people  and  their  histories.  That  there 
is  a  good  deal  of  snobbery  among  our  wealthy  and 
fashionable  class,  our  imitation  aristocracy  of 
money,  is  undoubtedly  true.  And  to  the  average 
sane-minded  American  there  is  something  dis 
tinctly  foolish  in  the  sight  of  an  American  mother 
trailing  her  daughters  through  Europe  with  the 
open  and  unashamed  intention  of  selling  them  to 
a  title.  But,  after  all,  questions  of  this  kind  are 


DAVID  GRAHAM  PHILLIPS         125 

largely  a  matter  of  the  point  of  view.  There  is 
no  useful  purpose  served  in  waxing  indignant  over 
people  who  happen  to  regulate  their  lives  some 
what  differently  from  the  way  in  which  you  or  I 
would  regulate  our  lives.  It  is  always  worth  while 
to  set  forth  as  strongly  as  possible  in  a  story 
certain  existing  social  conditions  which  the  author 
in  his  secret  heart  condemns,  but  there  is  nothing 
gained  by  insisting  that  the  reader  must  condemn 
them  also.  It  may  very  well  happen  that  the 
reader  does  not  at  all  share  the  author's  views,  and 
in  that  case  such  an  attempt  to  prejudice  him  is 
fully  as  irritating  as  is  the  coloring  given  to  news 
in  a  paper  of  the  opposite  political  party  to  your 
own. 

This  interference  on  the  part  of  Mr.  Phillips, 
born  as  it  was  of  over-earnestness,  produced  upon 
the  types  of  his  people  and  the  construction  of  his 
plots  certain  modifications  which  are  precisely 
what  a  shrewd  judge  of  books  might  have  ex 
pected  in  advance  to  find  there.  In  the  first  place, 
it  led  him  quite  frequently  to  picture,  not  what 
average  people  are  doing  under  existing  condi 
tions,  but  what  somewhat  unusual  people  would 
in  his  opinion  have  done  under  conditions  just  the 
reverse  of  those  that  exist — as,  for  instance,  in 
The  Second  Generation,  not  what  happens  to  the 
inefficient  heirs  of  great  wealth,  when  the  hard 
working  father  dies,  but  to  the  distinctly  excep- 


124.         DAVID  GRAHAM  PHILLIPS 

tional  and  self-sufficient  children  of  a  rich  man 
who,  for  their  own  good,  deliberately  disinherits 
them.  Or  again,  in  White  Magic,  he  studied  not 
the  typical  case  of  the  girl  reared  in  wealth  and 
luxury  who,  upon  losing  her  heart  to  an  impecu 
nious  artist,  fights  a  long  battle  with  herself  be 
cause  she  cannot  go  against  her  training;  but  the 
exceptional  case  of  the  girl  who  flings  such  train 
ing  to  the  winds  and  brazenly  offers  her  heart  and 
hand  to  the  penniless  artist  in  question,  who,  be 
ing  himself  equally  an  exception,  repulses  her 
because  he  selfishly  thinks  that  she  will  interfere 
with  his  art. 

And,  secondly,  this  tendency  to  tell  us  what  we 
ought  to  think  has  its  effect  upon  the  individual- 
ization  of  his  characters,  and  more  especially  upon 
his  women.  What  I  mean  here  is  best  illustrated 
by  taking  for  a  moment  a  book  from  which  this 
particular  fault  is  absent,  The  Husband's  Story. 
The  fact  that  this  book  was  written  in  the  first 
person  made  it  of  course  impossible  for  Mr.  Phil 
lips  to  obtrude  directly  his  own  opinions ;  and 
probably  it  is  due  to  this  fact  quite  as  much  as  to 
any  other  that,  artistically  speaking,  this  is  the 
best  book  that  he  produced.  The  character  of  the 
wife  Edna  we  get  entirely  as  colored  by  the  hus 
band's  eyes — as  strongly  colored  as  though  we  were 
looking  at  her  through  a  piece  of  stained  glass.  The 
admirable  thing  about  it  is  that  the  color  is  uni- 


DAVID  GRAHAM  PHILLIPS         125 

formly  and  consistently  maintained  from  start  to 
finish — a  bit  of  craftsmanship  that  requires  a 
rather  masterly  touch."  In  turning  from  this  book 
to  others  that  are  not  written  in  the  first  person 
we  realize  that  a  good  deal  of  the  time  Mr.  Phil 
lips  was  coloring  his  women,  not  so  strongly  to 
be  sure,  but  none  the  less  to  a  noticeable  extent — • 
in  other  words,  that  he  was  forcing  us  to  see  them 
through  the  medium  of  his  own  eyes  instead  of 
directly  from  life.  We  become  aware  of  this  by 
finding  that  he  quite  frequently  expects  us,  in 
deed  demands  of  us,  to  admire  things  that  his 
heroines  do  and  say  which  we  ourselves  cannot 
find  at  all  admirable;  and  sometimes  he  is  led  into 
making  them  take  certain  actions  that  we  are 
quite  sure  the  women  that  we  ourselves  think  they 
are  would  not  have  been  guilty  of  taking.  But 
questions  of  this  kind  are  not  a  matter  for  gener 
alization;  they  can  be  better  understood  when  we 
proceed  to  take  up  for  separate  analysis  a  few 
of  the  more  significant  of  Mr.  Phillips's  novels. 

During  the  dozen  years  that  represent  the 
period  of  his  activity  as  a  writer  of  fiction,  Mr. 
Phillips  produced  somewhat  less  than  a  score  of 
volumes.  To  analyze  these  books  one  by  one  in 
the  order  of  their  appearance,  beginning  with  The 
Great  God,  Success  and  A  Woman  Ventures  and 
coming  steadily  down  the  list  through  Golden 
Fleece  and  The  Cost  and  all  the  rest  of  them, 


126         DAVID  GRAHAM  PHILLIPS 

would  be  not  only  tiresome  but  futile.  It  would 
be  simply  one  of  the  many  ways  of  making  it  im 
possible  to  see  the  woods  because  of  the  trees.  Mr. 
Phillips  was  striving  from  the  start  to  do  pretty 
much  the  same  sort  of  thing  in  all  his  work;  and 
the  only  practical  difference  between  his  later  vol 
umes  and  his  earlier  is  that  he  was  steadily  learn 
ing  to  do  the  same  sort  of  thing  considerably  bet 
ter.  For  this  reason  there  is  no  more  point  in 
spending  time  on  those  earlier  volumes  than,  if  one 
were  writing  an  analysis  of  Zola,  it  would  be  worth 
while  to  waste  space  on  Madeleine  Ferat  and 
Nantas  and  Therese  Raquin.  In  point  of  fact, 
one  gets  quite  effectively  the  whole  range  of  Mr. 
Phillips's  powers  and  also  of  his  weaknesses  in  the 
volumes  that  belong  to  his  period  of  mature  de 
velopment,  the  volumes  produced  within  the  last 
four  or  five  years. 

The  Second  Generation  is  probably  the  best 
book  to  recommend  to  a  reader  approaching  Mr. 
Phillips  for  the  first  time,  because,  on  the  one 
hand,  it  contains  less  than  most  of  his  books  that 
is  likely  to  arouse  antagonism;  and,  on  the  other, 
it  admirably  illustrates  his  strongest  qualities,  his 
ability  to  give  you  the  sense  of  life  and  motion 
and  the  clash  of  many  interests.  The  substance 
of  it  can  be  told  in  rather  fewer  words  than  is 
usual  with  Mr.  Phillips's  novels.  Old  Hiram 
Ranger,  millionaire  manufacturer  of  barrels  in  a 


DAVID  GRAHAM  PHILLIPS         127 

small  Western  town,  suddenly  makes  two  rather 
painful  discoveries.  First,  he  learns  that  his  re 
markable  physical  strength,  which  has  never  once 
failed  him  throughout  all  his  years,  is  at  last 
breaking  and  that  he  has  not  many  days  in  which 
to  "  set  his  house  in  order."  And  his  second  and 
even  more  painful  discovery  is  that  for  twenty 
years  he  has  unwittingly  been  harming  his  son  and 
his  daughter  by  over-indulgence,  allowing  them  to 
grow  up  in  idleness,  to  form  foolish  and  extrava 
gant  tastes,  to  choose  their  friends  exclusively 
from  the  ultra-fashionable  circles  and  to  learn  to 
despise  the  humble  beginnings  from  which  he  him 
self  sprang  and  from  which  the  money  that  they 
thoughtlessly  waste  has  come.  He  decides  in  bit 
ter  agony  of  soul  that  there  is  at  this  late  date 
only  one  thing  that  he  can  do  to  repair  his  huge 
mistake:  and  that  is  to  deprive  his  children  of  the 
inheritance  on  which  they  have  counted.  The  act 
hurts  him  more  cruelly  than  it  can  possibly  hurt 
them — it  hurts  him  through  his  love  for  them, 
through  his  pride  in  them  and  through  his  desire 
for  public  esteem  and  approval,  since  he  foresees 
that  such  an  act  will  be  misunderstood  and  disap 
proved.  All  of  this  part  of  the  story,  the  old 
man's  sturdy  courage  and  shrewd  common  sense, 
contrasted  with  the  weak  vanity  and  costly  luxury 
of  the  son  and  daughter,  is  given  with  graphic 
truth,  rugged  strength,  and  a  sure  swiftness  of 


128         DAVID  GRAHAM  PHILLIPS 

movement.  But  from  the  middle  point  of  the 
story  we  get  a  rather  exasperating  impression  that 
we  are  being  allowed  to  behold  not  so  much  a 
cross-section  of  life  as  an  up-to-date  morality 
play.  Old  Hiram  Ranger  has  chosen  rather  dras 
tic  methods  to  teach  his  son  and  daughter  a  les 
son,  to  reform  their  characters,  practically  to 
make  them  over.  No  one  can  say  that  a  situation 
thus  created  is  without  interest;  but  it  becomes 
exasperating  to  find  that  the  old  man  has  made 
his  calculations  with  the  sureness  of  omnipotence, 
that  his  plan  succeeds  even  in  all  its  minor  details 
and  that  the  son  and  daughter  repent  of  all  their 
errors,  reform  themselves  completely,  are  to  all 
intents  and  purposes  born  anew.  Mr.  Phillips 
was  probably  not  conscious  of  it  when  he  wrote  the 
book,  but  none  the  less  it  is  to  all  practical  in 
tents  a  grown-up  version  of  the  story  of  the  bad 
little  boy  who  went  fishing  on  Sunday  and  was 
drowned  and  the  good  little  boy  who  went  to 
church  and  was  rewarded  with  plum  pudding. 

A  dozen  different  readers  would  probably  give 
a  dozen  different  statements  of  the  central  theme 
of  Old  Wives  for  New.  The  real  importance  of 
this  book — for  among  Mr.  Phillips's  books  it  is 
unquestionably  one  of  the  important  ones — is  that 
it  sets  forth  quite  pitilessly  the  gradual  estrange 
ment  that  arises  between  a  husband  and  wife  in  the 
course  of  long  years  through  the  woman's  sloth 


DAVID  GRAHAM  PHILLIPS         129 

and  selfishness  and  gratification  of  all  her  whims. 
It  is  an  open  question  whether  Mr.  Phillips's 
method  of  presenting  this  problem  might  not  have 
been  improved  upon.  What  he  has  done  is  to  show 
us  first  in  a  brief  prelude  the  sudden  ardor  of  a 
boy-and-girl  attachment,  each  caught  by  the 
mere  physical  charm  of  youth  and  health  and  high 
spirits  and  rushing  into  a  marriage  with  no  firm 
basis  of  mutual  understanding.  Then  he  skips  an 
interval  of  about  twenty  years  and  takes  us  into 
the  intimate  life  of  this  same  couple,  showing  us 
with  a  frankness  of  speech  and  of  thought  that  is 
almost  cruel  in  its  unsparing  realism  the  physical 
and  mental  degeneration  of  the  woman,  fat  and 
old  and  slovenly  before  her  time,  and  the  unspoken 
repulsion  felt  by  the  man  who  has  kept  himself 
young,  alert  and  thoroughly  modern  in  outward 
appearance  as  well  as  in  spirit.  The  situation  is 
complicated  by  the  presence  of  two  grown  chil 
dren,  a  son  and  a  daughter,  who  see  unwillingly 
the  approaching  crisis  and  realize  their  helpless 
ness  to  ward  it  off.  Such  a  situation  in  real  life 
may  solve  itself  in  any  one  of  fifty  different  ways. 
What  Mr.  Phillips  has  chosen  to  do  is  to  bring 
the  husband  in  contact  with  a  young  woman  who 
represents  everything  in  which  his  own  wife  is 
lacking.  And  although  the  man  fights  for  a  long 
time  against  temptation,  in  the  end  he  obtains 
freedom  from  the  old  wife  through  the  divorce 


130         DAVID  GRAHAM  PHILLIPS 

court,  and  promptly  replaces  her  with  the  new. 
There  is  probably  no  other  American  novel  that 
gives  us  with  such  direct  and  unflinching  clairvoy 
ance  the  sordid,  repellent,  intimate  little  details 
of  a  mistaken  marriage  that  slowly  but  surely  cul 
minates  in  a  sort  of  physical  nausea  and  an  in 
evitable  separation.  What  a  good  many  of  us  are 
apt  to  resent  in  the  book  is  the  stamp  of  approval 
that  the  author  seems  to  place  upon  the  man  who 
deliberately  discards  a  wife  after  her  youth  and 
beauty  are  gone,  not  because  he  thinks  it  for  their 
mutual  welfare,  but  for  the  cold-blooded  reason 
that  he  wants  to  marry  somebody  else.  There  is 
a  sort  of  heartless  immorality  about  the  whole 
proceeding  that  makes  us  feel  that  the  slovenly, 
faded  wife,  with  her  shallow  pretense  of  having 
worn  herself  out  with  household  cares,  her  glut 
tony  that  has  been  the  ruin  of  health  and  beauty, 
her  peevish  temper  and  ridiculous  vanity,  makes 
on  the  whole  a  rather  better  showing  than  the  hus 
band.  One  cannot  leave  this  book  without  adding 
just  a  word  of  protest  against  what  may  seem  a 
trivial  detail,  yet  is  the  sort  of  detail  in  which  Mr. 
Phillips's  technique  sins  rather  frequently.  The 
husband  has  met  the  woman  who  embodies  his  ideal 
of  feminine  perfection  quite  by  chance  in  the 
woods,  where  he  and  his  son  are  camping  out.  In 
the  course  of  three  weeks,  almost  without  their 
knowing  it,  they  have  fallen  in  love  with  each 


DAVID  GRAHAM  PHILLIPS         131 

other;  then  comes  the  awakening,  and  they  go 
their  separate  ways,  the  man  still  knowing  nothing 
of  the  woman's  identity,  of  her  station  in  life  or 
of  the  particular  corner  of  America  which  is  her 
home.  Several  chapters  later  the  man  is  in  New 
York  helping  his  daughter  buy  her  trousseau. 
There  are  a  thousand  shops  in  New  York  from 
which  she  might  choose,  but  purely  by  chance  she 
takes  her  father  to  the  one  shop  which  happens 
to  be  presided  over  by  the  woman  with  whom  he 
is  in  love.  A  coincidence  of  this  sort  is  bad 
enough  when  it  seems  to  be  more  or  less  of  a 
structural  necessity;  but  when,  as  in  this  case, 
one  can  think  of  a  dozen  simple  ways  of  avoidance, 
it  becomes  unpardonable. 

There  is  only  one  excuse  for  pausing  to  speak 
of  Mr.  Phillips's  next  volume,  The  FashionabU 
Adventures  of  Joshua  Craig;  namely,  that  it  shows 
that  even  yet  the  author  was  weak  in  the  power  of 
self-criticism.  How  it  was  possible  for  a  writer 
possessing  the  breadth  of  view  and  the  power  of 
expression  that  have  gone  into  the  making  of  at 
least  four  or  five  of  Mr.  Phillips's  best  novels  to 
put  forth  seriously  a  piece  of  cheap  caricature 
like  Joshua  Craig  quite  passes  the  understanding 
of  the  ordinary  impartial  outsider.  Joshua  Craig 
is  simply  an  exaggerated  specimen  of  a  rather 
exasperating  type  of  novel  which  has  unfortu 
nately  become  far  too  common  in  American  fie- 


132         DAVID  GRAHAM  PHILLIPS 

tion:  the  novel  which  shows  the  refined  and 
carefully  nurtured  American  girl,  usually  from 
the  East,  belying  all  her  inherited  instincts  and 
acquired  training  by  marrying  the  rugged,  virile, 
usually  rather  vulgar  man  of  the  people  who,  for 
the  purposes  of  this  type  of  novel,  is  generally 
represented  as  coming  from  the  West.  The  whole 
type  seems  to  have  originated  at  about  the  time 
that  Owen  Wister  made  Mollie's  New  England 
conscience  capitulate  to  The  Virginian;  and  the 
type  has  steadily  degenerated  year  by  year.  But 
of  course  it  is  never  fair  to  quarrel  with  an  author 
simply  because  one  does  not  happen  to  like  what 
he  has  tried  to  do.  The  trouble  with  Joshua  Craig 
is  that  he  has  so  obviously  failed  to  do  what  he 
tried.  Joshua  is  not  merely  bluff  and  rugged  and 
primitive  of  manner;  he  is  loud-mouthed  and  vul 
gar  and  deliberately  discourteous.  Margaret 
Severance,  the  reigning  beauty  of  Washington, 
whom  he  decides  in  his  stormy,  violent,  irresistible 
way  to  marry — not  because  he  loves  her,  but  be 
cause  he  conceives  the  idea  that  she  loves  him — 
is  in  point  of  manners  pretty  nearly  his  match. 
She  has  a  way  of  looking  at  people  "  with  a  lady's 
insolent  tranquillity  " ;  and  on  one  occasion,  when 
she  receives  a  letter  that  angers  her,  and  her  maid 
happens  at  the  same  moment  to  be  buttoning  her 
shoes,  she  relieves  her  feelings  by  springing  up 
and  bringing  her  sharp  French  heel  down  with 


DAVID  GRAHAM  PHILLIPS         133 

full  force  on  the  back  of  her  maid's  hand,  leaving 
it  skinned  and  bleeding.  She  is  distinctly  an  un 
pleasant  personality,  yet  even  so,  to  marry  her 
to  such  a  cyclonic  boor  as  Joshua  Craig  does  seem 
rather  like  making  the  punishment  exceed  the 
crime. 

Passing  over  White  Magic,  which  is  simply  an 
innocuous  little  love  story  told  with  rather  more 
explosive  violence  than  the  theme  warrants,  we 
come  to  the  two  books  that  exhibit  Mr.  Phillips's 
ripest  powers,  The  Hungry  Heart  and  The  Hus 
band's  Story.  The  Hungry  Heart  is  a  sincere 
and  detailed  study  of  a  marriage  that  threatens 
to  be  a  failure  because  the  man  adheres  to  old- 
fashioned  standards  regarding  women,  while  the 
wife,  with  her  modern  education  and  progressive 
views,  finds  it  impossible  to  accept  the  role  of 
domesticity  and  inaction  to  which  he  would  assign 
her.  As  a  piece  of  careful  construction  this  vol 
ume  deserves  frank  praise.  The  entire  action  takes 
place  within  the  house  and  grounds  of  the  hus 
band's  ancestral  home;  the  cast  of  characters  is 
limited  to  just  four  people — two  men  and  two 
women ;  we  hardly  get  even  a  passing  glimpse  of 
any  outsiders,  friends  or  relatives,  or  even  serv 
ants.  And  yet  within  this  little  world  of  four 
people  we  get  a  sense  of  universality  of  theme  and 
interest,  an  impression  not  of  learning  the  secrets 
of  a  few  isolated  lives,  but  of  learning  much  that 


134         DAVID  GRAHAM  PHILLIPS 

is  big  and  vital  about  man  and  woman.  There  is 
nothing  essentially  new  in  the  specific  story;  it  is 
simply  one  of  the  many  variants  of  the  familiar 
triangle — the  husband  and  wife  who  drift  apart, 
the  other  man  who  takes  advantage  of  a  woman's 
loneliness  to  persuade  her  that  she  is  in  love  when 
really  she  is  only  bored;  and  finally  the  inevitable 
discovery  by  the  husband  of  his  wife's  infidelity. 
What  gives  the  book  its  value  is  not  the  episode 
of  the  wife's  frailty,  but  the  wise,  far-sighted  un 
derstanding  of  the  way  in  which  two  people, 
physically,  mentally  and  morally  well  equipped  to 
make  each  other  happy,  gradually  drift  apart 
through  stubborn  adherence  to  foolish  prejudices, 
mistaken  reticence,  petty  misunderstandings,  and 
a  hundred  and  one  trivialities,  no  one  of  which 
by  itself  is  worth  a  second  thought,  while  the 
cumulative  effect  of  them  all  becomes  fatal.  Mr. 
Phillips's  solution  of  the  story,  in  which  he  makes 
the  wife  experience  a  revulsion  of  feeling  that 
drives  her  from  her  lover  back  to  her  husband, 
while  the  husband,  after  hearing  her  confession, 
not  only  forgives  her  but  practically  admits  that 
he  is  glad  everything  has  happened  as  it  has,  be 
cause  the  effect  upon  him  is  to  have  reawakened  his 
love — this  solution  comes  as  a  disappointment. 
One  feels  it  to  be  in  the  nature  of  an  anti-climax 
to  an  exceptionally  fine  piece  of  work.  That  a 
man  of  this  husband's  conventional,  conservative 


DAVID  GRAHAM  PHILLIPS         135 

type  could  bring  himself  to  pardon  and  receive 
back  the  woman  who  admits  her  guilt  with  a  frank 
ness  of  speech  that  makes  one  wince,  rings  false. 
Forgiveness  under  such  circumstances  is  a  delu 
sion  and  a  blunder.  The  ghost  of  such  a  past 
would  simply  refuse  to  be  laid. 

An  interesting  side  light  on  the  concluding 
chapters  of  The  Hungry  Heart,  which  in  point  of 
fact  came  near  to  being  the  author's  favorite 
among  all  his  books,  is  shed  by  the  following  anec 
dote  :  it  was  pointed  out  to  him  one  day  in  friendly 
criticism  that  a  woman  such  as  the  heroine  was 
portrayed  to  be  throughout  the  first  half  of  the 
story  would  neither  have  remained  with  her  lover 
nor  gone  back  to  her  husband,  but  would  have 
lived  alone  unless  some  third  man  eventually  came 
into  her  life.  This  comment  impressed  Mr.  Phil 
lips  to  an  extent  which  seemed  disproportionate, 
until  he  confessed  that  the  solution  of  a  third  man 
was  precisely  what  he  had  planned  from  the  start 
as  definitely  as  it  lay  in  him  to  plan  anything  in 
advance.  But,  he  explained,  when  he  had  reached 
the  midway  point,  his  characters  took  the  matter 
quite  out  of  his  hands.  He  suddenly  awoke  to  a 
realization  that  his  heroine  was  quite  a  different 
woman  from  what  he  had  all  along  supposed  her 
to  be ;  she  made  it  clear  to  him  that  she  was  not 
the  kind  either  to  hold  to  the  old  lover  or  to  take 
a  new  one;  she  was  the  type  of  woman  who  would 


136         DAVID  GRAHAM  PHILLIPS 

have  the  courage  to  go  back.  "  If  I  have  not 
made  her  convincing,"  he  concluded,  "  to  that  ex 
tent  The  Hungry  Heart  is  a  failure — but,"  he 
added  undauntedly,  "  I  know  the  type  of  woman 
I  was  after  and  I  know  she  would  have  done  just 
what  I  made  this  woman  do." 

Lastly,  we  have  The  Husband's  Story,  which  is 
the  type  of  book  that  we  had  long  had  the  right 
to  expect  from  Mr.  Phillips,  and  which  if  he  had 
been  spared  might  have  been  the  first  of  a  long 
series  of  equal  strength  and  bigness.  Like  all  of 
this  author's  best  previous  work,  it  is  a  study  of 
a  marriage  that  failed.  And  the  reason  that  it 
is  a  better  and  bigger  book  than  any  of  his  others 
is  not  because  of  his  theme,  but  because  of  his 
workmanship:  the  thing  is  better  done,  in  its  un 
derlying  structure,  in  its  working  out  of  details, 
in  all  that  goes  to  make  up  good  technique.  Rob 
ert  Herrick,  when  he  wrote  The  Diary  of  an 
American  Citizen,  attempted  to  handle  much  the 
same  subject  in  the  same  way — but  that  book, 
clever  though  it  was,  hardly  did  more  than  scratch 
the  surface  of  the  opportunity  lurking  in  his 
theme.  Mr.  Phillips  dug  deeper :  he  has  shown  us, 
in  the  lives  of  a  certain  couple,  Godfrey  Loring 
and  Edna,  his  wife,  all  the  artificiality  and  selfish 
ness,  the  empty  ambitions  and  false  ideals  that  lie 
behind  the  tinsel  and  glitter  of  the  so-called 
"  Four  Hundred."  The  husband  tells  the  story 


DAVID  GRAHAM  PHILLIPS         137 

with  great  simplicity  and  directness.  He  makes 
no  secret  of  the  utter  sordidness  of  their  origin 
in  Passaic,  New  Jersey;  of  Edna's  father,  the  un 
dertaker,  known  as  Old  Weeping  Willy;  and  his 
own  father,  "  honest  innocent  soul,  with  a  taste 
for  talking  what  he  thought  was  politics."  He 
makes  it  clear  that  Edna  married  him,  not  for 
love,  but  because  he  was  getting  the  biggest  sal 
ary  of  any  of  the  young  fellows  whom  she  knew 
and  so  offered  her  the  best  chance  of  advancement. 
She  deliberately  intended,  when  she  married  him, 
to  get  as  much  out  of  him  as  could  be  gotten 
by  clever  driving;  nor  could  she  have  planned  the 
thing  more  ruthlessly  had  she  been  acquiring  a 
beast  of  burden,  instead  of  a  husband.  Now, 
the  one  thing  that  saves  the  story  and  renders 
it  at  all  possible  is  the  fact  that  the  husband  is 
an  exceptional  man  with  that  extra  sense  which 
constitutes  the  business  instinct,  and  coupled  with 
it  a  saving  sense  of  humor.  The  early  chapters, 
picturing  the  transition  period  while  Edna  was 
floundering  out  of  the  half-baked  standards  of 
Passaic  into  the  midway  stage  of  Brooklyn,  are 
full  of  those  wonderful  little  flashes  of  first-hand 
observation  that  seem  like  fragments  filched,  if 
not  directly  out  of  your  life  and  mine,  at  least 
from  that  of  the  family  next  door  or  of  the  neigh 
bor  across  the  street.  This  husband  is  never  for 
an  instant  under  any  illusion  about  his  wife;  he 


138         DAVID  GRAHAM  PHILLIPS 

realizes  her  incompetence — the  incompetence  of 
thousands  of  young  American  wives  for  the  par 
ticular  work  they  have  undertaken:  the  work  of 
wife  and  of  mother  and  of  housekeeper.  He  re 
alizes  too  her  craving  for  social  advancement; 
and,  in  a  half-confessed  way,  he  sympathizes  with 
her  and  is  willing  to  accept  the  fruits  of  her 
social  conquests,  although  he  will  not  raise  a  fin 
ger  toward  helping  her.  This  perhaps  is  the  clev 
erest  touch  in  Mr.  Phillips's  satire.  He  does  not 
tell  us  in  so  many  words  that  the  husband  is  just 
as  much  at  fault  as  the  wife,  just  as  unfitted  for 
his  task  of  husband,  and  father  and  master  of  the 
house  as  she  is  for  her  duties, — but  he  makes  this 
perfectly  clear  and  distributes  the  blame  with  an 
admirable  equity.  If  she  has  been  cold  and  cal 
culating  and  dishonest  in  her  social  life,  he  has 
been  cold  and  calculating  and  dishonest  in  his 
business  life;  if  she  is  meanly  and  snobbishly 
ashamed  of  the  people  from  whom  she  sprang,  so 
also  is  he;  if  she  has  been  too  absorbed  in  her 
schemes  for  advancement  to  give  him  the  compan 
ionship  due  from  a  wife,  he  in  turn  is  too  ab 
sorbed  in  huge  financial  deals  to  give  her  the  love 
and  care  due  from  a  husband.  In  other  words, 
this  book  might  be  defined  as  an  indictment  of  the 
"  high  life  "  American  marriage,  on  the  ground 
of  the  woman's  vaulting  ambition  and  overween 
ing  self-importance,  and  the  man's  inertia,  coupled 


DAVID  GRAHAM  PHILLIPS         139 

with  his  absorption  in  the  busy  game  of  chasing 
dollars.  A  large  part  of  the  merit  of  this  un 
deniably  big  novel  lies  in  what  it  merely  implies 
rather  than  in  what  it  says.  To  conceive  a  story 
of  this  sort  is  something  in  itself  to  be  proud  of; 
but  to  conceive  of  telling  it  through  the  husband's 
lips  was  a  stroke  of  genius.  To  have  told  it  in 
any  other  way  would  have  been  to  rob  it  of  its 
greatest  merit,  the  all-pervading  sting  of  its 
satire. 

As  I  have  tried  frankly  to  recognize,  Mr.  Phil 
lips  was  a  writer  with  many  qualities  and  some  de 
fects — like  all  men  who  have  it  in  them  to  do 
big  things.  But  it  would  have  been  easy  to  for 
give  more  serious  faults  than  his  in  any  one  pos 
sessing  his  breadth  and  depth  of  interest  in  the 
serious  problems  of  American  life  and  his  out 
spoken  fearlessness  in  handling  them.  There  are, 
unfortunately,  few  in  this  country  to-day  who  are 
even  trying  to  do  the  sort  of  work  that  he  was 
doing.  And  the  fact  that  he  did  it  with  apparent 
ease  and  that  he  had  reached  a  point  where  he 
had  begun  to  do  it  with  triumphant  strength  mul 
tiplies  tenfold  the  tragedy  of  his  untimely  death. 
The  interruption  of  fate  at  the  midpoint  in  his 
career  has  entailed  a  loss  to  American  fiction  not 
only  irreparable  but  one  which  can  never  be  accu 
rately  measured. 


ROBERT  HERRICK 

IT  was  in  the  autumn  of  1897  that  Professor 
Robert  Herrick,  who  occupies  the  chair  of 
Rhetoric  in  the  University  of  Chicago,  produced 
a  novel  entitled  The  Gospel  of  Freedom.  His  name 
at  that  time  was  not  quite  unknown  in  fiction, 
thanks  to  a  few  earlier  efforts,  more  notable  for 
manner  than  for  content ;  yet  The  Gospel  of  Free 
dom  came  quite  unheralded,  a  glad  surprise  to  the 
serious  student  of  fiction,  who  at  that  period  was 
forced  to  take  a  rather  pessimistic  view  of  the 
future  of  the  American  novel.  One  did  not  need 
to  read  a  dozen  pages  before  discovering  that  here 
was  a  man  who  was  familiar  with  the  best  of  what 
the  modern  French  school  has  to  offer;  who  un 
derstood  wherein  lay  the  strength  of  Maupassant, 
of  Bourget,  of  Zola, — and  in  a  tentative  and  by 
no  means  inadequate  way,  was  trying  to  profit  by 
their  teaching.  Its  theme  was  one  already  famil 
iar  to  readers  of  Continental  literature:  the  revolt 
of  the  modern,  neurotic  women  against  the  tram 
mels  of  social  conventions,  the  awakening  of  the 
unhappily  mated  wife  to  a  sense  of  her  inborn 
right  to  live  her  own  life  in  her  own  way.  In 
140 


ROBERT  HERRICK 


ROBERT  HERRICK  141 

other  words,  it  was  a  variation  of  the  underlying 
motif  of  Magda,  of  Hedda  Gabler,  of  The  Doll's 
House;  executed  with  a  nice  appreciation  of  Euro 
pean  craftsmanship  and  an  equally  subtle  insight 
into  peculiarly  American  conditions.  Altogether, 
it  was  a  book  of  big  promise,  in  spite  of  consid 
erable  unevenness,  and  here  and  there  a  touch 
that  was  almost  crude;  at  the  time  it  looked  big 
ger,  no  doubt,  than  it  does  to-day,  as  we  glance 
back  at  it,  along  the  vista  of  his  later  achieve 
ments.  One  realizes  now  that  he  had  not  yet 
found  himself,  that  he  was  working  a  trifle  uncer 
tainly,  with  tools  not  quite  adapted  to  his  needs, 
experiencing  the  dilemma  of  a  foreign-trained  ma 
chinist  attempting  to  put  together  American- 
made  implements  with  nuts  and  screws  cut  to  a 
scale  of  centimeters  instead  of  inches.  What  he 
had  not  yet  learned  to  do  and  what  he  soon  re 
alized  that  he  must  learn  before  success  could 
come  was  to  adapt  Continental  methods  to  Anglo- 
Saxon  needs,  to  revise  his  craftsmanship  with  the 
same  independent  courage  with  which  from  the  be 
ginning  he  had  chosen  his  themes. 

It  was  during  this  transition  period,  this  proc 
ess  of  finding  himself,  of  discovering  just  what 
he  was  trying  to  do  and  how  he  was  trying  to  do 
it,  that  the  two  books  of  least  interest  as  stories 
and  of  least  worth  in  point  of  technique  were 
written:  The  Web  of  Life  and  The  Real  World. 


142  ROBERT  HERRICK 

One  feels  in  reading  them  over  again  to-day  that 
the  two  titles  in  some  degree  symbolize  the  mental 
attitude  of  their  author  at  that  time.  Like  his 
heroes,  Mr.  Herrick  was  finding  the  threads  of 
life's  web  in  a  rather  sorry  tangle,  and  was  grop 
ing  for  a  solution  of  the  world's  real  meaning; 
and  so,  inevitably,  they  forced  the  reader  to  do 
some  little  groping  on  his  own  account.  In  short, 
like  many  another  author's  second  and  third  book, 
they  were  disappointing;  and  people  who  had 
based  their  faith  upon  The  Gospel  of  Freedom 
were  justified  in  asking,  Is  Mr.  Herrick  destined 
to  remain  in  the  rank  of  writers  of  a  single  book? 
But  the  appearance,  in  due  course  of  time,  of  The 
Common  Lot  and  its  still  more  virile  successor, 
The  Memoirs  of  an  American  Citizen,  answered 
this  question  with  a  vigorous  and  welcome  nega 
tive,  and  foreshadowed  the  coming  of  the  volume 
which  remains  to  this  day  not  only  Mr.  Herrick's 
biggest  achievement  but  the  finest,  boldest,  most 
representative  piece  of  American  fiction  that  has 
appeared  within  the  past  decade:  Together.  And 
this  statement  is  made  not  merely  with  Mr.  Her 
rick's  subsequent  volume,  A  Life  for  a  Life,  clearly 
in  mind,  but  largely  for  the  purpose  of  discrimi 
nating  sharply  against  it.  A  Life  for  a  Life  rep 
resents,  as  we  shall  presently  see,  a  curious  and, 
it  is  to  be  hoped,  a  transient  apostasy.  Something 
still  remains  in  it  of  the  old  Herrick;  certain 


ROBERT  HERRICK  143 

pages,  here  and  there,  of  a  purely  pictorial  char 
acter  flash  forth,  with  a  graphicness  that  is  al 
most  cruel  in  its  unsparing  truth,  the  swarming, 
turgid  city  life  of  to-day.  None  the  less,  when 
the  sum  total  of  its  plus  and  minus  values  has  been 
honestly  taken,  A  Life  for  a  Life  must  be  set 
down  upon  the  debit  side  of  its  author's  literary 
account ;  in  other  words,  it  is  a  rather  audacious, 
rather  splendid  failure. 

But  before  considering  this  new  phase  of  Mr. 
Herrick's  development,  it  is  essential  to  run  over 
quite  briefly  his  earlier  novels  and  thus  obtain  a 
bird's-eye  view  of  what  in  each  case  he  has  tried 
to  do  and  how  far  he  has  succeeded  in  doing  it. 
The  first  thing  of  which  you  become  aware  in 
taking  up  The  Gospel  of  Freedom  is  the  initial 
debt  which  its  author  owed  to  Ibsen  and  Suder- 
mann  and  to  that  whole  tendency  in  drama  and 
fiction  that  took  its  impulse  from  Heimath  and 
Hedda  Gabler.  In  other  words,  its  theme  is  in 
the  main  the  spirit  of  revolt  of  the  modern  rest 
less,  somewhat  neurotic  woman  against  the  estab 
lished  conventions,  and  the  tragedy  which  such  a 
revolt  entails,  because  the  woman  fails  to  under 
stand  that  freedom  is  something  that  must  start 
from  within  and  not  from  without ;  something  that 
cannot  be  acquired  by  a  mere  payment  of  money 
or  a  flagrant  breaking  of  the  marriage  bond. 
Adela  Anthon  is  too  healthy  minded  a  young 


144  ROBERT  HERRICK 

woman  to  be  classed  with  the  Magdas  and  Hed- 
das  of  the  Old  World;  but  she  has  to  a  large  ex 
tent  a  strain  of  what,  for  lack  of  a  preciser  term, 
is  wont  to  be  stigmatized  artistic  temperament. 
She  does  not  quite  despise  the  brick  industry  on 
which  the  colossal  fortune  of  the  Anthons  has 
been  reared,  nor  the  comfortable  blocks  of  brick 
stock  which  form  her  independent  means;  but  she 
does  rebel  against  the  prescribed  routine  of  her 
conventional  social  life,  forces  her  family  to  al 
low  her  the  semi-liberty  of  a  course  in  the  Paris 
art  schools,  and  at  the  opening  of  the  book  seems 
in  a  fair  way  to  marry  Simeon  Erard,  a  penniless 
dabbler  in  art,  a  parasite  on  her  uncle's  bounty, 
who  has  shown  much  promise  in  a  dozen  differ 
ent  lines  and  accomplishment  in  none.  But  before 
she  makes  up  her  mind  to  bestow  her  hand  and 
fortune  on  Erard,  in  fact  before  Erard  has  made 
up  his  mind  to  ask  her,  a  restless,  energetic,  suc 
cessful  young  Westerner,  John  Wilbur,  who  is 
spending  a  hard-earned  vacation  in  Paris,  takes 
her  by  storm,  dazzles  her  with  the  picturesque  ac 
count  of  his  big  achievements  in  irrigation  ma 
chinery,  and  more  particularly  his  conquest  over 
men  and  over  natural  forces.  Marriage  with  him 
would  mean  a  splendid  partnership,  a  new,  un 
dreamed-of  freedom,  an  opportunity  to  have  a 
share  in  the  world's  big  enterprises.  The  awaken 
ing  comes  quickly;  marriage,  she  learns  with  a 


ROBERT  HERRICK  145 

shock,  is  not  a  partnership ;  it  has  its  obligations, 
against  which  she  rebels  mutely ;  but  of  compensa 
tions,  in  the  shape  of  an  understanding  and  inter 
est  in  her  husband's  vast  business  schemes,  she  finds 
there  is  nothing  for  her.  Within  a  year  after 
marriage  she  is  declaring  bitterly,  "  There  is  no 
freedom  for  women;  they  are  marked  incapable 
from  their  birth  and  are  supported  by  men  for 
some  obvious  and  necessary  services.  Between 
times  they  have  a  few  indifferent  joys  dealt  out 
to  them."  But  what  brings  about  the  final  wreck 
of  her  marriage  is  not  merely  temperamental  in 
compatibility,  but  a  difference  in  standards  of 
honor  and  business  integrity.  Wilbur's  business 
conscience  is  elastic ;  if  he  does  not  actually  have 
a  hand  in  bribing  the  legislature  to  pass  certain 
railroad  measures  that  send  stocks  and  bonds 
soaring  upward,  he  does  participate  in  the  profits ; 
and  what  Adela  finds  impossible  to  forgive  is  that 
the  very  house  she  lives  in  is  paid  for  with  what 
she  persists  in  regarding  as  stolen  money.  Then 
follow  the  death  of  her  only  child;  the  arrival  in 
Chicago  of  Simeon  Erard  and  his  somewhat  too 
pronounced  friendship  with  Adela ;  her  husband's 
rather  vulgar  jealousy  of  the  artist;  and  finally, 
Adela's  open  revolt,  her  refusal  to  live  any  longer 
in  a  marriage  that  she  feels  is  only  a  bondage,  and 
her  departure  to  Paris  for  an  indefinite  period. 
Reckless  of  conventions,  she  openly  flaunts  her 


146  ROBERT  HERRICK 

friendship  with  Erard — a  friendship  which  in  her 
defiant  mood  she  is  willing  to  let  drift  to  any 
length.  But  Erard,  coldly  working  for  his  own 
best  interest,  bides  his  time  until  the  news  comes 
that  her  husband,  through  the  courts,  has  given 
the  wife  her  freedom.  In  this,  however,  he  over 
reaches  himself;  this  subservience  to  the  world's 
opinion  on  the  part  of  the  man  who  had  taught 
her  to  despise  conventions,  and  to  whom  until  now 
she  would  willingly  have  given  herself,  brands  him 
in  her  eyes  a  hypocrite,  with  whom  life  would  be 
simply  another  and  ignobler  form  of  bondage.  She 
realizes  at  last  that  in  her  rebellion  she  has  not 
been  attaining  freedom,  but  simply  beating  her 
self  impotently  against  the  bars  of  a  prison  largely 
of  her  own  making. 

It  has  seemed  worth  while  to  examine  The  Gos 
pel  of  Freedom  at  some  length,  because  in  it  we 
find  already  well  developed  the  two  themes  that 
in  one  form  or  another  underlie  all  Mr.  Herrick's 
subsequent  work — the  discords  of  sex  and  the 
discords  of  commercialism.  Adela  Wilbur's  re 
pudiation  of  her  marriage  duties,  John  Wilbur's 
repudiation  of  the  highest  standards  of  business 
integrity,  are  only  the  first  instances  in  a  long 
series  of  lives  that  Mr.  Herrick  shows  us,  wreck 
ing  themselves  on  the  same  dangerous  shoals.  The 
Web  of  Life  and  The  Real  World,  his  next  two 
books  in  point  of  time,  need  only  a  brief  mention, 


ROBERT  HERRICK  117 

because  they  are  rather  loose  in  structure  and  of 
no  great  significance  in  the  history  of  his  develop 
ment.  The  Web  of  Life  may  be  conveniently  de 
fined  as  a  male  Gospel  of  Freedom,  a  man's  rebel 
lion  against  the  obligations  which  the  world's 
conventions  thrust  upon  him,  just  as  Adela  Wilbur 
rebelled  against  the  obligations  that  life  laid  upon 
her.  Howard  Sommers  is  a  promising  young 
physician,  whose  good  fortune  it  is  to  find  on  land 
ing  in  Chicago  that  some  old  friends  of  the  fam 
ily,  the  influential  and  wealthy  Hitchcocks,  are 
disposed  to  help  him;  that  the  daughter,  Louise 
Hitchcock,  looks  upon  him  with  favor;  that  a 
place  is  open  for  him  on  the  staff  of  the  famous 
Dr.  Lindsay — in  short,  that  he  is  on  the  high 
road  to  fortune.  But  his  professional  conscience 
will  not  leave  him  in  peace;  his  impractical  ideals 
teach  him  that  it  is  wrong  for  a  physician  to  ac 
cept  payment  beyond  a  mere  pittance;  his  intol 
erance  of  the  conventions  of  a  fashionable  prac 
tice  makes  his  early  expulsion  from  Dr.  Lindsay's 
office  a  foregone  conclusion;  and  the  long,  dis 
heartening,  hand-to-mouth  struggle  that  follows, 
with  all  its  inherent  miseries,  and  the  incidental 
loss  of  the  woman  he  loves,  is  needful  to  bring 
him  to  a  sane  understanding  of  the  necessity  of 
accepting  the  world  as  it  is  and  effecting  an 
honorable  compromise  between  reality  and  our 
ideals. 


148  ROBERT  HERRICK 

The  Real  World,  while  it  is  an  attempt  to  de 
velop  still  further  this  same  idea,  is  mainly  inter 
esting  as  a  study  of  individual  lives.  The  gradual 
building  up  of  Jack  Pemberton's  character,  from 
his  early  boyhood,  isolated  on  a  small  farm  on  the 
Maine  coast,  until  he  finally  achieves  success, 
prosperity  and  happiness,  is  undoubtedly  a  fine 
and  strong  piece  of  portraiture,  executed  with  a 
more  assured  touch  than  Mr.  Herrick  had  pre 
viously  achieved.  The  high  purposes  which  take 
permanent  hold  upon  the  lad  at  the  prompting  of 
a  girl  seemingly  forever  beyond  his  reach,  and 
which  continue  to  force  him  onward  and  upward, 
step  by  step,  even  when  the  girl  herself  has  dis 
appointed  his  ideals  and  would  have  dragged  him 
down  with  her,  are  all  interpreted  with  such  sym 
pathetic  understanding  that  the  secrets  of  a  hu 
man  soul  are  laid  bare  before  us,  and  we  under 
stand  minutely  and  intimately  how  Jack  Pembcr- 
ton  succeeded  in  his  endeavor  to  "  keep  faith  with 
life." 

But  Mr.  Herrick's  strength  lies,  not  in  the 
probing  analysis  of  individual  lives,  but  in  the 
broad,  comprehensive  interpretation  of  human  mo 
tives  and  tendencies  in  the  mass;  and  this  gift  of 
generalization,  this  rare  ability  to  treat  life  on 
an  epic  scale,  with  a  bold  sweep  of  brush  strokes, 
an  imposing  breadth  of  canvas,  has  developed  and 
progressed  steadily  with  each  successive  volume, 


ROBERT  HERRICK  149 

up  to  the  full  ripeness  of  Together.  The  first 
of  his  stories,  however,  that  showed  clearly 
wherein  his  real  strength  lay  was  The  Common 
Lot.  Like  all  stories  of  the  bigger  type,  it  has 
a  twofold  motive:  first,  a  specific  story  of  the 
struggle  of  a  young  architect  between  his  artistic 
ideals  on  the  one  hand  and  business  success  on  the 
other ;  secondly,  the  big,  general,  far-reaching 
problem  whether  the  common  lot,  the  comparative 
obscurity  and  narrowness  of  the  vast  majority  of 
lives,  is  not  better  and  happier  than  wealth  and 
position  attained  at  the  cost  of  self-esteem. 
Francis  Jackson  begins  with  splendid  ambitions ; 
and  had  the  millionaire  uncle  who  gave  him  his 
training  at  the  Paris  Beaux  Arts  also  made  him 
his  heir  instead  of  leaving  the  bulk  of  his  fortune 
to  found  an  industrial  school,  the  nephew  might 
never  have  felt  the  temptation  to  be  untrue  to  his 
art  or  to  compromise  with  his  conscience.  But, 
under  the  goad  of  vanity  and  ambition  and  a 
feverish  desire  for  wealth,  he  yields  to  the  tempt 
ing  offers  of  a  dishonest  contractor,  consents  lit 
tle  by  little  to  turn  out  inferior  work,  to  permit 
shameless  tampering  with  specifications,  to  con 
nive  at  the  bribery  of  building  inspectors — in 
short,  to  lend  himself  to  every  crooked  trick 
known  to  the  profession.  And  one  fine  day  retri 
bution  overtakes  him.  He  is  disgraced  in  the  eyes 
of  his  friends  and  relatives,  because  they  discover 


150  ROBERT  HERRICK 

that  the  industrial  school  erected  under  his  direc 
tion,  with  his  uncle's  money,  is  a  fraudulent  piece 
of  work  from  cellar  to  roof.  This,  however,  can 
be  and  is  hushed  up.  But  another  and  worse  dis 
aster  follows,  the  destruction  by  fire  of  a  so-called 
fire-proof  hotel,  which  with  his  full  knowledge  the 
contractor  has  so  skimped  and  slighted  that  it  is 
little  more  than  a  cardboard  death-trap: — and 
even  if  the  scandal  could  be  silenced,  Jackson  could 
never  silence  the  memory  of  the  victims'  screams 
as  they  flung  themselves  from  the  windows  or  fell 
inward  to  a  still  worse  fate.  The  experience 
leaves  Francis  Jackson  a  sadder  but  far  wiser 
architect ;  and  although  he  lives  down  the  scandal, 
he  has  learned  his  lesson  well — that  it  is  better  to 
share  the  common  lot  and  be  at  peace  with  one's 
self  than  at  the  cost  of  self-respect  to  attain 
wealth  and  power  and  the  envious  admiration  of 
the  world.  Because  "  there  are  few  things  that 
make  any  great  difference  to  real  men  and  women 
— and  one  of  the  least  is  the  casual  judgment  of 
their  fellow-men." 

The  Memoirs  of  an  American  Citizen,  which 
might  with  equal  aptitude  have  been  called  The 
Confessions  of  a  Chicago  Packer,  treats  more  spe 
cifically,  and  from  the  opposite  point  of  view,  the 
whole  big  problem  of  honest  and  dishonest  busi 
ness  methods.  Edward  Harrington  comes  to  Chi 
cago,  a  friendless  lad,  without  money  or  prospects ; 


ROBERT  HERRICK  151 

he  begins  as  driver  for  a  retail  market,  and  from 
this  he  works  himself  up,  step  by  step,  by  clever 
tricks,  unscrupulous  moves,  dishonest  deals  and 
combinations,  until  he  ends  as  controlling  power 
of  the  Meat  Trust,  master  of  the  destinies  of 
many  railways,  banks  and  trust  companies,  and 
United  States  senator  from  Illinois.  There  is  not 
a  step  in  his  upward  path  that  by  the  higher 
standards  of  honesty  is  quite  beyond  reproach, 
not  an  achievement  that  is  not  somewhere  be 
smirched.  Yet,  as  he  unfolds  this  very  frank  and 
ingenuous  chronicle,  you  feel  that  the  man  is  hon 
est  in  his  frankness;  that  he  believes  himself  to 
be  in  the  right,  and  justifies  to  himself  each  and 
every  questionable  act.  He  believes  that  it  is 
best  for  the  world  that  he  shall  succeed,  and  in 
order  to  succeed  he  must  fight  the  world  with  its 
own  weapons.  And  at  the  end  he  looks  out  over 
the  city  of  Chicago,  with  its  drifting  smoke,  its 
ceaseless  traffic: 

I,  too,  was  a  part  of  this.  The  thought  of  my 
brain,  the  labor  of  my  body,  the  will  within  me,  had 
gone  to  the  making  of  this  world.  There  were  my 
plants,  my  car  line,  my  railroads,  my  elevators,  my 
lands — all  good  tools  in  the  infinite  work  of  this 
world.  Conceived  for  good  or  for  ill,  brought  into 
being  by  fraud  or  daring — what  man  could  judge 
their  worth?  There  they  were,  a  part  of  God's  great 
world.  They  were  done;  and  mine  was  the  hand. 


152  ROBERT  HERRICK 

Let  another,  more  perfect,  turn  them  to  a  larger  use; 
nevertheless,  on  my  labor,  on  me,  he  must  build. 

Involuntarily  my  eyes  rose  from  the  ground  and 
looked  straight  before  me,  to  the  vista  of  time.  Surely 
there  was  another  scale,  a  grander  one,  and  by  this 
I  should  not  be  found  wholly  wanting! 

There,  in  a  paragraph,  we  get  the  colossal,  ego 
tistical,  invincible  confidence  of  the  successful  mag 
nate  in  the  justice  of  his  cause.  And  yet,  had  he 
stopped  here,  Mr.  Herrick's  picture  would  have 
remained  unfinished  and  not  quite  convincing. 
But,  with  unerring  instinct,  he  has  added  here 
and  there  the  needful  little  ironic  touch ;  this  mas 
terful  man,  so  sure  of  himself,  so  infallible,  so  far 
beyond  the  reach  of  malice  or  envy,  knows  that 
there  are  just  two  or  three  people  in  the  world 
whose  approbation  he  craves  and  cannot  win — the 
old  judge  who  once  befriended  him,  and  now  docs 
not  see  him  when  they  pass ;  the  trusted  employee 
who  will  no  longer  serve  him;  his  brother's  wife, 
who  in  early  days  might  have  been  his  own,  had 
he  chosen  to  speak,  and  who  now  would  starve, 
and  see  her  family  starve  with  her,  rather  than 
take  a  penny  of  his  money.  It  is  the  knowledge 
of  these  facts  that  rankles  and  adds  a  dash  of  bit 
terness  to  his  final  triumph. 

To  sum  up  this  brief  review  of  Mr.  Herrick's 
past  achievements,  the  general  impression  that 
they  make  upon  the  critical  mind  is  that,  grant- 


ROBERT  HERRICK  153 

ing  their  strength,  their  subtle  understanding  of 
life,  their  admirable  lights  and  shades,  their  fre 
quent  splendid  brilliancy  of  description,  they  after 
all  suggest  not  so  much  an  accomplishment  as  an 
apprenticeship  to  something  bigger  and  higher. 
To  be  sure,  they  are  American,  unmistakably  so; 
the  product  of  keen  interest  and  intimate  under 
standing  of  the  conditions  of  life  in  this  coun 
try,  and  more  specifically  of  life  in  the  big, 
progressive  Middle  West.  And  considered  as  in 
dividual  volumes,  stories  of  separate  human  lives, 
little  groups  of  humanity  working  out  their  in 
dividual  destinies,  they  deserve  to  stand  high  in 
the  list  of  the  best  fiction  our  writers  have  pro 
duced  in  the  last  decade.  But  from  the  first  vol 
ume  to  the  last,  we  cannot  escape  the  impression 
that  Mr.  Herrick's  dominant  interest  is  in  some 
thing  beyond  the  mere  story  he  has  to  tell;  that 
his  ideal  of  fiction  is  to  present  through  the  me 
dium  of  individual  men  and  women  the  big,  basic 
problems  on  which  depend  the  welfare  of  a  people, 
and,  what  is  more,  so  to  present  them  as  to  force 
the  reader,  whether  he  will  or  not,  to  take  thought 
of  them.  Hitherto,  however,  he  has  not  been  ready 
to  accomplish  on  a  big  scale  the  sort  of  novel  of 
which  he  has  so  evidently  dreamed — the  novel  of 
wide,  sweeping,  Zolaesque  magnitude,  with  its 
symbolic  title,  its  crowded  canvas,  its  motley  pano 
rama  of  human  lives.  Central  ideas  he  has  had, 


154  ROBERT  HERRICK 

to  be  sure,  and  his  titles  as  well  as  his  themes  have 
not  been  lacking  in  symbolism;  but  there  was  a 
certain  vagueness  about  them,  a  lack  of  specific 
intent.  One  might,  without  serious  injustice, 
shuffle  his  titles  and  redistribute  them;  in  a  gen 
eral  way,  the  central  characters  in  all  these  books 
are  struggling  in  the  Web  of  Life,  learning  their 
lesson  of  disillusion  from  the  Real  World,  rebelling 
against  the  Common  Lot  and  thirsting  for  the 
Gospel  of  Freedom.  It  is  curious  to  see  how  with 
each  successive  book  Mr.  Herrick  has  broadened 
his  field  of  vision,  as  his  knowledge  of  life  has 
widened ;  how  he  began  as  a  psychologue  of  the 
school  of  Bourget  and  Henry  James,  and  little 
by  little  swung  around  to  the  freer,  more 
objective  methods  of  the  realist,  caring  less 
and  less  for  the  vivisection  of  a  human  heart  un 
der  a  microscope  and  more  and  more  for  tracing 
the  orbit  of  an  ethical  problem  through  a  tele 
scope.  Sooner  or  later,  those  who  had  faith  in 
him  felt  sure  that  Mr.  Herrick  would  produce  a 
really  big  book,  perhaps  the  first  of  a  series  of 
big  books ;  and  suddenly,  and  rather  sooner  than 
was  expected,  he  justified  this  belief  with  To 
gether,  his  fine,  sane,  fearless  study  of  American 
Marriage. 

It  may  be  said  with  some  assurance  that  no 
American  novel  of  such  ambitious  purpose  and 
such  a  sweeping  amplitude  of  outlook  has  been 


ROBERT  HERRICK  155 

written  since  Frank  Norris  gave  us  the  opening 
volumes  of  his  Epic  of  the  Wheat;  and  no  such 
relentless  probing  into  the  subtle  characteristics 
of  American  womanhood  since  Robert  Grant  pre 
cipitated  a  war  of  critics  over  Unleavened  Bread. 
And  there  is  this  important  distinction  to  be  made 
in  favor  of  Mr.  Herrick's  book :  that  whereas  Rob 
ert  Grant  gave  us  in  Selma  White  just  one  memo 
rable  type,  the  author  of  Together  has  given  us  a 
score  of  types,  every  one  of  them  undeniably, 
surprisingly,  triumphantly  true  and  essentially 
American.  As  we  have  already  seen,  throughout 
the  wide  diversity  of  his  themes,  one  of  Mr.  Her 
rick's  persistent  preoccupations  is  the  tragedy  of 
mismated  marriage.  ^  Sometimes,  as  in  The  Gospel 
of  Freedom,  the  woman  simply  mistook  for  love 
her  unbounded  enthusiasm  for  the  man's  fighting 
strength,  his  virile  power  to  achieve  success ;  some 
times,  as  in  The  Real  World,  she  makes  the  more 
sordid  and  less  pardonable  blunder  of  thinking 
that  wealth  and  social  prestige  will  compensate  her 
for  the  absence  of  love ;  sometimes,  as  in  The  Com 
mon  Lot,  she  loves  not  the  actual  man  whom  she 
has  married  but  a  figment  of  her  imagination,  an 
ideal  that  she  has  created  in  his  image;  and  when 
one  day  he  stands  revealed  and  she  sees  him  as  he 
is,  the  whole  universe  crumbles  miserably  to  pieces 
around  her.  In  comparison,  however,  with  To 
gether,  all  these  earlier  themes  take  on  the  aspect 


156  ROBERT  HERRICK 

of  preparatory  studies,  trials  of  strength,  as  it 
were,  preparing  the  way  to  his  first  big  unqualified 
achievement. 

There  is  no  useful  purpose  to  be  served  by  at 
tempting  to  analyze  the  central  story  of  Together. 
Like  L' Argent  or  L'Assommoir,  it  has  no  central 
plot  in  the  usual  conventional  sense;  but  just  as 
Zola's  novels  are  the  embodiment  of  some  big, 
symbolic  idea,  frenzied  finance  personified  by  the 
Bourse,  intemperance  by  the  Wine-Shop,  earth's 
universal  motherhood  by  the  Soil, — so  Robert 
Herrick  has  for  his  central  figure  the  personifica 
tion  of  Marriage.  The  married  life  of  Isabelle 
Price  and  John  Long,  with  whose  wedding  the  vol 
ume  opens,  leaving  them  "  henceforth  man  and 
wife  before  the  law,  before  their  kind — one  and 
one,  and  yet  not  two,"  is  obviously  not  intended 
by  the  author  to  be  more  typical  «or  more  signifi 
cant  than  the  score  of  other  marriages  of  which 
he  unveils  for  us  the  intimate  joys  and  griefs. 
Every  well-composed  canvas  must  have  its  central 
group,  its  focal  point  towards  which  its  signifi 
cant  lines  converge :  but  in  Together  we  must  bear 
in  mind  that  it  is  not  Isabelle  Price  who  is  the  real 
protagonist,  but  Marriage  with  a  capital  M,  the 
symbolic  figure  of  American  wifehood.  Graphic 
as  the  picture  is  of  this  particular  couple's  first 
mistakes,  their  temporary  and  makeshift  readjust 
ment,  and  their  slow,  reluctant  awakening  to  actu- 


ROBERT  HERRICK  157 

alities,  this  special  side  of  the  book,  considered  as 
an  individual  human  story,  is  only  a  fragment,  an 
unfinished  pattern,  a  single  thread  in  the  intri 
cate  and  complex  fabric  of  human  lives  that  the 
author  has  patiently  and  splendidly  woven.  It 
is  not  the  individual  nature  of  Isabelle  Price  that 
we  remember  as  we  call  to  mind  those  bold  open 
ing  chapters  which  are  probably  the  most  thought- 
compelling  portrayal  of  a  young  couple  crossing 
the  threshold  of  married  life  that  any  author  has 
given  since  Maupassant  wrote  his  unforgettable 
pages  in  Une  Vie;  she  stands  for  us  simply  as  the 
average  type  of  young  American  womanhood,  en 
tering  blithely,  unthinkingly,  unwarned,  upon  the 
most  serious  obligations  of  life ;  more  engrossed 
in  the  guests,  the  presents,  the  fit  of  her  wedding 
gown,  the  brilliant  social  function  of  which  for 
the  moment  she1  is  the  center,  than  she  is  in  the 
years  of  intimate  companionship  that  lie  before 
her.  And  then,  after  all  has  been  done,  "  as  or 
dained  by  the  church,  according  to  the  rules  of 
society,"  and  it  remains  "  for  Man  and  Wife  to 
make  of  it  what  they  would — or  could,"  the  in 
evitable  awakening  comes  and  they  look  into  each 
other's  eyes,  as  countless  thousands  of  wedded 
couples  have  done  before  them,  and  realize  that 
they  are  looking  into  the  eyes  of  strangers.  It 
is  not  on  this  particular  couple  that  our  gaze 
should  be  focused  as  we  read,  but  on  those  count- 


158  ROBERT  HERRICK 

less  couples  that  preceded  them  and  the  countless 
other  couples  that  are  fated  to  follow.  The 
crucial  point  is  not  the  mere  fact  that  this  par 
ticular  marriage  was  a  mistake,  but  that  it  was 
"  one  of  the  millions  of  mistakes  women  make  out 
of  the  girlish  guess,"  mistakes  arising  from 
"  blind  ignorance  of  self  and  life."  In  short,  the 
recurrent  burden  of  Robert  Herrick's  theme  is  the 
hidden,  insistent,  inevitable  tragedy  underlying 
countless  married  lives, — the  tragedy  so  often 
summed  up  carelessly,  even  scornfully,  with  the  flip 
pant  euphemism  of  "  incompatibility."  A  plunge 
in  the  dark,  a  bewildered  awakening,  a  losing  fight 
for  readjustment,  an  inevitable  revulsion:  such 
is  Mr.  Herrick's  epitome  of  thousands  of  mar 
riages  the  world  over;  and  while  this  holds  true 
for  the  world  at  large,  the  conditions,  he  seems 
to  think,  are  peculiarly  aggravated  in  America. 
Our  lives  here  are  lived  to  a  great  extent  at  fever 
heat;  the  husbands  tend  more  and  more  to  con 
sume  their  vitality  in  ceaseless  nerve-racking 
strife  for  more  and  ever  more  wealth  and  power; 
and  the  wives  are  daily  sacrificing  to  vanity  and 
pleasure,  social  leadership  and  Browning  Societies 
more  and  more  of  the  obsolescent  virtue  of 
domesticity. 

But  it  would  be  a  mistake  to  assume  that  Mr. 
Herrick  finds  no  happy  marriages  in  America,  or 
even  that  he  would  assert  that  the  happy  marriage 


ROBERT  HERRICK  159 

is  a  rare  exception.  The  reproach  which  has  been 
too  frequently  made  against  Together, — namely, 
that  by  assembling  a  score  or  more  of  ill-mated 
couples,  truant  husbands,  erring  wives,  the  whole 
sad  gamut  of  incompatibility,  infidelity,  and  the 
divorce  courts,  he  has  shown  a  distorted  per 
spective,  a  false  sense  of  proportion, — really  rests 
on  no  firmer  ground  than  a  similar  reproach 
against  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin,  L'Assommoir,  and 
every  other  big,  epic  study  of  ethical  problems. 
Mr.  Herrick  is  here  studying  unhappy  marriages, 
not  happy  ones ;  and  with  the  latter  type  he  has 
no  more  concern  than  the  pathologist  engaged  in 
a  research  of  malarial  germs  has  with  healthy 
human  beings  or  healthy  mosquitoes.  And  equally 
mistaken  is  the  effort  to  find  in  Together  a  rem 
edy  for  matrimonial  discord.  Mr.  Herrick  simply 
records  a  certain  number  of  typical  cases ;  he  at 
tempts  no  solution,  he  merely  gives  us  the  facts 
and  says  in  effect :  "  Here  is  what  I  find ;  think 
this  over  for  yourselves."  How  to  remedy  the 
prevailing  lack  of  common  interest  between  hus 
band  and  wife;  the  men  engrossed  in  the  great 
game  of  amassing  wealth,  the  women  equally  en 
grossed  in  the  game  of  spending  it;  the  decrease 
in  domesticity,  in  motherhood,  in  the  old-fash 
ioned  family  affection  and  loyalty — these  are 
conditions  which  he  depicts  without  bias  and  with 
out  comment,  but  With  the  calm  assurance  of  one 


160  ROBERT  HERRICK 

who  is  certain  of  his  facts  and  of  the  high  moral 
worth  of  his  purpose.  And  for  this  reason  To 
gether  is  a  book  which,  whatever  may  be  its  rela 
tive  value  as  a  contribution  to  literature,  belongs, 
as  regards  the  spirit  in  which  it  is  conceived,  in 
the  category  of  Zola's  Fecondite  and  Tolstoi's 
Kreutzer  Sonata. 

It  seemed  reasonable  to  assume,  after  a  triumph 
of  such  magnitude,  that  our  author's  course  was 
definitely  laid  at  least  for  some  years  to  come; 
that  Together  was  the  harbinger  of  a  lengthening 
series  of  similar  vigorous  studies  of  the  crucial 
problems  in  our  busy,  arduous  American  life  of 
to-day,  handled  with  the  same  fearless  and  robust 
naturalism.  For  this  reason,  when  A  Life  for  a 
Life  was  published  it  could  scarcely  fail  to  bring 
to  a  good  many  of  its  author's  sincere  well-wishers 
something  of  a  shock.  When  readers  who  had 
hitherto  not  been  in  sympathy  with  Mr.  Herrick's 
aims  and  achievements  permitted  themselves  to  say 
somewhat  patronizingly  that  A  Life  for  a  Life 
was  in  a  distinctly  different  vein  from  any  of  his 
previous  work  and  that  he  seemed  at  last  to  be 
really  in  earnest,  it  was  only  natural  that  his  ad 
mirers  should  approach  the  book  with  rather  som 
ber  misgivings.  Here  was  a  writer  who  for  twelve 
years  had  produced  very  nearly  an  annual  volume, 
every  one  of  which  had  borne  witness  that  he  was 
not  merely  in  earnest  but  just  about  as  earnest 


ROBERT  HERRICK  161 

as,  humanly  speaking,  it  is  possible  for  a  writer 
to  be, — earnest,  that  is,  in  his  determination  to 
handle  the  big  truths  of  life  as  frankly  and  sin 
cerely  as  lay  within  his  power,  and  to  satisfy 
his  own  conscience  regarding  the  substance  and 
the  method  of  his  work,  unmindful  whether  the 
general  public  liked  it  or  not.  He  had  steeped 
himself  in  the  theories  and  practice  of  the  Conti 
nental  school  as  opposed  to  the  English  and 
American, — that  was  the  real  secret  of  his  fear 
lessness  and  his  strength.  If  now,  for  the  first 
time,  he  had  so  altered  his  method  that  any  reader 
could  make  the  mistake  of  attributing  to  him  a 
newborn  earnestness,  it  could  mean  only  one  thing : 
that  he  had  begun  to  obtrude  his  own  personal 
opinions, — that,  to  some  extent  at  least,  he  had 
lost  that  purely  objective  attitude  which  has  al 
ways  been  one  of  his  chief  assets. 

And  this  was  precisely  what  had  happened.  A 
Life  for  a  Life  is  as  radical  a  departure  from  the 
substance  and  the  method  of  Together  as  in  Zola's 
case  Les  Quatre  Evangiles  were  from  the  sub 
stance  and  method  of  Les  Rougon-Macquart.  It 
was  small  wonder  that  to  many  a  reader  the  vol 
ume  brought  keen  disappointment ;  small  wonder 
that  a  review  like  the  London  Academy  found  it 
self  gravely  saying: 

It  is  rather  baffling  when  we  remember  the  high 
standard  attained  by  Mr.  Herrick  in  Together, — a 


162  ROBERT  HERRICK 

book  which  seemed  to  hold  clear  indications  of  a 
masterpiece  later  on, — to  find  that  in  his  latest  vol 
ume  he  lapses  almost  into  mediocrity. 

Yet,  on  the  other  hand,  there  were  those  who 
hailed  A  Ltfe  for  a  Life  as  the  author's  high-water 
mark.  It  contained  scarcely  anything  likely  to 
offend  those  poor,  squeamish  souls  who  shrank 
from  the  fine  honesty  of  Together;  it  dealt  with 
what  newspapers  like  to  speak  of  as  "  live  issues  " ; 
and  the  one  fault  of  construction  in  its  closely 
interwoven  plot  is  that  it  is  too  careful,  too  sym 
metrical  to  ring  true.  What,  then,  is  the  matter 
with  the  book? 

The  answer  is  so  simple  and  so  obvious  that  if 
you  cannot  see  for  yourself  there  is  small  use  in 
trying  to  point  it  out  to  you.  Mr.  Herrick  has 
made  that  disastrous  mistake  that  many  another 
and  bigger  novelist  has  made  before  him,  of  be 
coming  more  interested  in  his  text  than  in  his 
story;  of  losing  his  clear  perception  .of  men  and 
women  in  his  sociological  theories  about  man  and 
woman ;  of  blurring  his  whole  picture,  because  he 
tries  to  paint  the  universe  at  once.  What  he  has 
undertaken  to  do,  so  far  as  one  may  venture  to 
expound  his  purpose,  is  to  crowd  into  the  limits 
of  a  single  canvas  the  sum-total  of  those  social 
and  economic  questions  that  are  to-day  responsi 
ble  for  most  of  our  national  unrest.  It  involves 


ROBERT  HERRICK  163 

problems  as  wide  apart  as  the  curbing  of  the 
trusts,  the  suppression  of  anarchy,  the  justifica 
tion  of  trade  unions,  the  regulating  of  the  social 
evil.  It  covers  a  vaster  field  than  even  Uncle 
Tom's  Cabin;  for  although  that  book  dealt  with 
a  problem  nation-wide  in  interest,  it  at  least  nar 
rowed  down  to  a  single  question  with  but  two 
possible  answers.  A  Life  for  a  Life  propounds  a 
score  of  questions,  each  with  more  sides  than  can 
readily  be  counted.  In  all  modern  fiction  only  one 
other  volume  comes  to  mind  so  all-embracing  in 
its  summing-up  of  existing  social  conditions : 
Zola's  Paris, — and  Paris  does  not  occupy  a  high 
place  in  the  life-work  of  Emile  Zola. 

In  undertaking  to  epitomize  A  Life  for  a  Life, 
one  feels  something  of  that  awkwardness  which  is 
experienced  in  an  attempt  to  pick  up  any  rather 
bulky  object  that  seems  to  protrude  an  uncom 
fortable  number  of  points  and  angles.  Here,  how 
ever,  in  a  brief  and  somewhat  ragged  abstract,  is 
the  substance  of  it.  Hugh  Grant,  a  foundling, 
indebted  to  his  foster-father  even  for  the  name 
he  bears,  leaves  his  country  home,  yields  to  the 
lure  of  the  city.  The  author  nowhere  says  that 
the  city  in  question  is  New  York;  but  his  local 
color  fits  no  other  place  on  the  terrestrial  globe. 
The  city's  wealth  and  power  are  symbolized  in 
the  person  of  Alexander  Arnold,  banker  and  multi 
millionaire,  who  gives  Hugh  a  chance,  for  no  bet- 


164  ROBERT  HERRICK 

ter  reason  than  that  Arnold  had  once  known  the 
elder  Grant  and  incidentally  cheated  him  out  of 
a  fortune.  Hugh  finds  lodgings  almost  directly 
beneath  a  mammoth  electric  advertising  sign  that 
perpetually  flashes  the  word  "  SUCCESS  "  into  the 
eyes  of  men.  Incidentally,  he  forms  a  friendship 
with  a  man  at  war  with  society  who  is  known  to 
the  reader  by  no  other  name  than  "  the  Anarch." 
Also,  he  meets  a  sweat-shop  girl,  a  certain  young 
Jewess  named  Minna,  and  witnesses  the  hideous 
accident  by  which  she  is  maimed  for  life  and  driven 
into  what  Mr.  Kipling  has  called  "  the  oldest  pro 
fession  in  the  world."  These  details  sound  frag 
mentary;  that  is  the  inevitable  penalty  of  over 
crowding  a  pattern.  Now  Arnold,  banker  and 
millionaire,  maker  and  destroyer  of  men,  likes 
young  Grant  and  proceeds  to  "  try  him  out,"  by 
sending  him  West  and  using  him  as  the  tool  with 
which  to  acquire  certain  vast  Western  properties, 
— consolidate,  amalgamate,  play  all  the  tricks  of 
the  big  financial  game,  heedless  of  the  trail  of  ruin 
that  the  process  may  leave  in  its  wake.  Hugh, 
being  what  he  is,  fails  to  live  up  to  Arnold's  expec 
tations.  He  is  too  clean-minded,  or  has  breathed 
too  much  clean  Western  air;  or,  if  you  please,  he 
is,  as  Arnold  thinks,  too  big  a  fool  to  succeed 
in  the  modern  business  struggle.  Then  there  is 
still  another  complicating  factor.  Like  Polonius, 
Arnold  has  a  daughter;  and  like  Hamlet,  young 


ROBERT  HERRICK  165 

Grant  harps  upon  her.  Like  Hamlet  also,  when 
the  time  comes  for  him  to  accept  the  good  things 
of  life  that  are  offered  to  him,  he  practically  tells 
her  "  Get  thee  to  a  nunnery  " — because  to  win  her 
means  acceptance  of  modern  economic  conditions 
and  to  this  he  cannot  bring  himself.  Having 
symbolized  all  the  varied  strata  of  society,  all  the 
warring  creeds  and  doctrines  of  the  economic 
world,  Mr.  Herrick  obviously  felt  the  need  of 
some  impressive,  spectacular  climax,  some  titanic 
convulsion  of  nature  which,  like  the  destruction  of 
Sodom  and  Gomorrah,  would  symbolize  the  wiping 
out  of  the  old  order  of  things  and  the  ushering  in 
of  a  new.  This  he  accomplishes  by  the  simple 
device  of  transferring  the  San  Francisco  earth 
quake  and  fire  to  New  York  City.  Pictorially,  his 
presentment  of  the  vast  upheaval  of  a  metropolis, 
the  clamor  of  men  and  the  crash  of  falling  build 
ings,  the  writhings  of  massed  humanity  in  their 
death  throes,  leaves  nothing  to  be  desired.  But 
what  one  does  resent  is  that  nice  subservience  of 
chance  which  obligingly  lets  all  the  characters  in 
the  book  meet  one  another  at  the  psychic  moment 
in  the  midst  of  chaos.  Hugh,  shaken  from  bed 
in  the  cosmic  crash,  casually  wanders  out  through 
reeling  streets,  meets  Minna,  the  woman  of  the 
gutter,  and  exchanges  with  her  what  Homer 
would  have  called  "  winged  words,"  then  moves 
onward  through  showers  of  stone  and  sheets  of 


166  ROBERT  HERRICK 

flame  and  casually  rescues  from  a  mob  Arnold's 
daughter,  Alexandra.  Then  follow  more  winged 
words,  in  the  course  of  which  the  girl  rises  to  the 
heights  of  unselfishness  that  he  once  had  vainly 
demanded  of  her  and  he  explains  that  it  is  now 
too  late  since  he  is  a  sick  man  dying  of  cancer. 
Moving  onward  along  more  reeling  streets,  they 
reach  her  father's  bank,  where  Alexandra  learns 
that  her  husband, — I  forgot  to  mention  that  she 
had  married  her  father's  partner, — lies  dead  in 
the  safe  deposit  vault,  smothered  by  the  very 
mechanism  provided  to  protect  his  wealth.  Her 
father,  meanwhile,  is  speeding  eastward  in  his 
automobile  toward  the  Brooklyn  Bridge,  plowing 
a  juggernaut  course  through  frenzied  mobs,  when, 
just  on  the  threshold  of  safety,  the  Anarch,  who 
turns  out  to  be  old  Arnold's  disowned  son,  arises 
out  of  darkness  an  avenging  nemesis,  springs 
into  the  machine,  swings  it  around  and  drives  him 
self  and  his  father  back  to  their  fate  in  the  flame- 
swept  city. 

As  above  pointed  out,  the  effect  of  this  synop 
sis  is  to  leave  an  irritating  sense  of  detached 
fragments ;  and  that  is  precisely  the  sense  one  gets 
from  the  book  itself.  It  conveys  the  impression 
not  of  a  vast,  complex,  closely  reticulated  scheme 
of  society,  but  of  a  handful  of  individuals  afloat  in 
some  sort  of  an  attenuated  social  medium,  who  by 
some  strange  law  of  attraction  miraculously  meet 


ROBERT  HERRICK  167 

each  other  under  seemingly  impossible  circum 
stances.  Picture  for  a  moment  the  chaos  of  a 
mammoth  city  overwhelmed  by  earthquake  and  by 
fire.  A  man  might  go  mad  at  such  a  time,  im- 
potently  seeking  the  loved  ones  whom  he  could  not 
find.  Mr.  Herrick  simply  lost  his  sense  of  reality 
in  the  latter  part  of  his  book.  It  is  a  thing  he 
never  did  before  and  one  sincerely  hopes  that  he 
will  never  do  it  again.  Much  symbolism,  it  would 
seem,  hath  made  him  mad;  and  furthermore,  it 
is  an  obscure  symbolism  that  leaves  the  reader 
groping. 

This,  then,  to-day,  is  the  position  of  Robert 
Herrick.  For  nearly  a  score  of  years  he  has  been 
true  to  a  definite  ideal,  writing  to  please  himself, 
regardless  of  popular  approval.  And  through 
pleasing  himself  he  attained  at  last,  in  Together, 
that  pleasantest  of  victories,  a  popular  indorse 
ment  of  his  own  methods  and  standards.  And  then 
suddenly,  inexplicably,  he  chooses  to  fling  aside 
the  victories  attained,  abandon  a  hard-won  bat 
tlefield  and  branch  off  in  a  new  direction  to  fight 
on  untried  ground.  It  is  to  be  hoped  not  only  for 
his  own  sake  but  for  the  greater  good  of  Ameri 
can  fiction  that  before  it  is  too  late  Mr.  Herrick 
will  go  back  again  to  the  firm  ground  of  his  ac 
knowledged  victories. 


EDITH  WHARTON 

IN  undertaking  a  critical  estimate  of  any  of  our 
modern  novelists  there  is  usually  a  good  deal  to 
be  learned  from  a  study  of  their  early  work,  the 
volumes  that  stand  as  a  record  of  their  appren 
ticeship.  In  the  case  of  Mrs.  Wharton,  however, 
we  have  to  dispense  with  any  such  sidelight. 
When  her  first  collection  of  short  stories  appeared 
in  1899,  under  the  title  of  The  Greater  Inclina 
tion,  the  most  salient  fact  about  them  and  the  one 
which  brought  swift  recognition  was  their  mature 
power,  their  finished  art.  As  it  seemed  to  us  then, 
the  clear-cut,  polished  brilliance  of  those  eight 
keen  studies  of  human  heart-pangs  represented 
the  full  development  of  a  talent  of  unusual 
magnitude.  Now,  from  the  vantage  point  of  a 
dozen  years,  we  can  see  that  the  author  of  The 
House  of  Mirth  and  Madame  de  Treymes  was  still 
far  from  having  found  the  full  measure  of  her 
strength;  that  a  plenitude  of  culture  and  social 
wisdom  had  veiled  an  unsure  technique;  and  that 
a  normal  sympathy  for  human  weakness  was  either 
lacking  or  else  deliberately  masked  under  an  as 
sumption  of  amused  irony.  It  is  possible  to 
168 


EDITH  WHARTON 


EDITH  WHARTON  169 

show  with  a  fair  degree  of  conclusiveness  that  in 
these  respects  Mrs.  Wharton's  later  work  is  big 
ger  and  stronger  and  more  human.  Yet  the 
changes  are  of  a  subtle  kind  that  would  not  strike 
the  casual  reader's  naked  eye ;  and  for  that  rea 
son  it  is  more  helpful,  in  considering  her  general 
characteristics  as  a  story  teller,  and  before  tak 
ing  up  her  separate  volumes,  to  ignore  any  divi 
sion  into  periods  and  to  treat  of  her  style,  her 
methods,  her  philosophy  of  life  as  though  there 
were  no  essential  difference  between  her  first  book 
and  her  last. 

Now  the  first  thing  that  must  strike  a  discrimi 
nating  critic,  whether  he  makes  her  acquaintance 
through  the  medium  of  "  The  Muse's  Tragedy  " 
or  "  The  Letters,"  is  that  he  has  to  do  with  an 
author  of  rare  mental  subtlety  and  unusual 
breadth  of  culture;  a  worldly  wise  person  with 
wide  cosmopolite  sympathies,  yet  rather  rigid 
prejudices  of  social  caste.  One  would  guess,  with 
no  further  help  than  the  light  shed  by  her  own 
writings,  that  here  was  a  mind  that  might  be  lik 
ened  to  a  chamber  of  art  treasures — not  over 
crowded,  but  sufficiently  rich  to  offer  a  pleasing 
harmony  of  color  and  form.  Such,  at  all  events, 
is  the  impression  that  one  gathers  from  her  stage 
setting.  She  lingers  over  each  interior,  its  por 
tieres  and  wall-papers,  its  etchings  and  mezzotints, 
its  choice  old  furniture  and  fragile  porcelain  with 


170  EDITH  WHARTON 

the  grudging  reluctance  of  a  bibliophile  relin 
quishing  a  first  edition  or  a  priceless  binding.  So 
far  as  the  atmosphere  of  her  stories  goes,  there 
is  everywhere  a  pervading  sense  of  art  and  lit 
erature  and  culture;  a  sense,  as  it  were,  of  sun 
light  softly  filtering  through  richly  stained  glass ; 
of  life  seen  relentlessly  within  the  limits  of  a  defi 
nite  angle.  Mrs.  Wharton's  literary  activity  has 
resulted,  up  to  the  present  day,  in  somewhat  more 
than  fifty  short  stories  and  novelettes,  and  three 
novels;  and  of  these  the  great  majority  deal 
frankly  with  the  literary  and  artistic  circle.  One 
has  only  to  run  over  in  memory  the  separate  sto 
ries  to  realize  the  truth  of  this.  There  are,  for 
instance,  no  less  than  a  dozen  in  which  the  hero 
is  by  profession  an  author;  every  reader  recalls 
at  once  "  The  Muse's  Tragedy,"  "  Souls  Belated," 
"Full  Circle,"  "Expiation,"  "The  Legend," 
**  The  Touchstone,"  and  there  is  no  use  in  ampli 
fying  the  list;  and  next  to  authors  her  favorite 
heroes  are  artists,  as  witness  "  The  Portrait," 
"The  Recovery,"  "The  Rembrandt,"  "The 
Moving  Finger,"  "The  Daunt  Diana,"  "The 
Letters,"  "The  Verdict,"  and  "The  Potboiler." 
Yes,  her  angle  of  outlook  upon  the  world  is  rather 
narrow;  but,  like  the  proverbial  still  waters, 
within  that  angle  her  thought  runs  rather  deep. 
Yet  if  Mrs.  Wharton  shows  a  predilection  for 
artistic  and  academic  society,  she  nevertheless  has 


EDITH  WHARTON  171 

a  far-reaching — I  was  tempted  to  say,  an  exag 
gerated — instinct  for  social  values.  In  all  the  va 
rious  settings  of  her  stories,  whether  in  the  self- 
satisfied  provincialism  of  a  New  England  college 
town,  or  the  full  flood-tide  of  New  York  life  to 
day,  or  of  Lombardy  a  century  ago,  she  never 
for  an  instant  allows  you  to  lose  sight  of  the  fact 
that  there  exists  a  local  social  code  more  potent 
than  any  laws  of  Medes  and  Persians;  a  fine, 
stratified  caste  system,  too  attenuated  for  any  but 
the  native  born  to  grasp  in  all  its  details,  yet 
inflexible  in  matters  of  cause  and  effect.  Her 
subtle  sense  of  the  far-reaching  significance  of 
some  quite  trivial,  perhaps  unconscious  infringe 
ment  of  these  unwritten  rules  of  conduct,  gives  us 
the  real  key  to  a  number  of  her  strongest  situa 
tions.  Her  understanding  of  human  nature,  her 
relentless  pursuit  of  a  motive  down  to  its  ulti 
mate  analysis,  her  deliberate  stripping  off  of  the 
very  last  veils  of  pretense,  showing  us  the  sordid- 
ness  and  cowardice  of  human  souls  in  all  their 
nudity,  are  unsurpassed  by  any  other  woman  nov 
elist  now  living.  She  has  a  trick  not  merely  of  \ 
describing  even  her  secondary  characters  so 
clearly  that  you  feel  you  can  see  them  both  inside 
and  out,  but  she  often  flings  out  some  single  line 
of  description  which  ever  afterwards  sticks  to  that 
particular  character  like  a  burr  and  is  probably 
the  first  thing  we  think  of  each  time  that  char- 


TO  EDITH  WHARTON 

acter  reappears.  For  instance,  in  "  Souls  Be 
lated,"  "  Mrs.  Tillotson,  senior,  dreaded  ideas  as 
much  as  a  draught  in  her  back  " ;  in  "  A  Coward," 
"  Mrs.  Carstyle  was  one  of  the  women  who  make 
refinement  vulgar  " ;  in  "  The  Mission  of  Jane," 
Mrs.  Lethbury  is  described  as  a  woman  "  most  of 
whose  opinions  were  heirlooms — she  was  proud  of 
their  age  and  saw  no  reason  for  discarding  them 
while  they  were  still  serviceable  " ;  and  still  again 
in  "  The  Portrait,"  Vard,  the  political  boss,  is 
described  to  us  as  a  man  "  who  had  gulped  his 
knowledge  standing,  as  he  had  snatched  his  food 
from  lunch-counters ;  the  wonder  of  it  lay  in  his 
extraordinary  power  of  assimilation."  And  such 
examples  could  be  multiplied  indefinitely. 

But  this  is  merely  a  superficial  aspect  of  Mrs. 
Wharton's  treatment  of  character  and  of  life. 
And  to  some  extent  the  surface  sparkle  of  her 
style  is  at  times  a  blemish ;  we  find  ourselves  stray 
ing  away  from  the  central  interest  of  the  story 
in  order  to  relish  for  a  moment  the  sheer  verbal 
cleverness  of  some  casual  epigram,  such  as 
"  Genius  is  of  small  use  to  a  woman  who  does  not 
know  how  to  do  her  hair  " ;  or  "  To  many  women 
such  a  man  would  be  as  unpardonable  as  to  have 
one's  carriage  seen  at  the  door  of  a  cheap  dress 
maker."  Her  whole  attitude  toward  the  person 
ages  of  her  stories  is  a  direct  application  of  La 
Rochefoucauld's  maxim  that  in  the  sorrows  and 


EDITH  WHARTON  173 

misfortunes  of  our  friends  we  find  something  that 
is  not  altogether  displeasing.  And  her  stories  al 
low  her  abundant  opportunity  to  do  this.  From 
first  to  last  they  deal  with  the  victims  of  fate — 
men  and  women  who  are  caught  in  the  meshes  of 
circumstance  and  struggle  with  as  hopeless  impo 
tence  as  so  many  fish  in  a  drag-net.  Mrs.  Whar- 
ton  may  not  be  conscious  of  it,  but  there  is  a 
great  deal  of  predestination  in  the  philosophy  of 
her  stories.  Nearly  all  her  heroes  and  heroines 
seem  foreordained  to  failure.  Of  struggle,  in  the 
sense  in  which  drama  is  defined  as  a  struggle,  a 
conflict  of  wills,  her  books  contain  little  or  noth 
ing.  Her  tragedies  belong  to  one  or  the  other 
of  two  classes,  or  to  a  combination  of  the  two: 
on  the  one  hand,  to  the  complications  arising  from 
not  understanding,  from  the  impossibility  of  ever 
wholly  getting  inside  another  person's  mind;  and 
on  the  other,  from  the  realization  that  one  cannot 
escape  from  one's  environment,  that  one's  whole 
family  and  race  have  for  generations  been  relent 
lessly  weaving  a  network  of  custom  and  precedent 
too  strong  for  the  individual  to  break. 

As  for  the  first  of  these  tragic  keynotes,  that  of 
misunderstanding,  it  is  only  necessary  to  glance 
through  a  few  of  the  separate  stories  chosen  al 
most  at  random  to  see  how  the  word  recurs  over 
and  over,  with  or  without  variations,  like  a 
leitmotiv.  Thus  in  the  story  entitled  "  In  Trust," 


174  EDITH  WHARTON 

Halidon  sums  up  the  crucial  point  with  the  words, 
"  I  can't  make  her  see  that  I'm  differently  situ 
ated  " ;  in  "  The  Last  Asset,"  Garnett  lays  his 
finger  on  the  difficulty,  "  Ah,  you  don't  know  your 
daughter!"  In  "The  Portrait,"  Mrs.  Mellish 
says :  "  I  wish  you'd  explain,"  and  Lillo  answers : 
"  Would  there  be  any  failures  if  one  could  ex 
plain  them?"  In  "Souls  Belated,"  Lydia  asks 
piteously :  "  You  do  understand,  don't  you?  "  and 
the  heroine  of  "  The  Muse's  Tragedy  "  says  pa 
thetically,  "  I  shall  never  be  quite  so  lonely  again 
now  that  some  one  knows."  "  That's  the  dread 
ful  part  of  it,"  says  Mrs.  Westall,  in  "  The  Reck 
oning,"  "  the  not  understanding."  And  even  in 
"  The  Daunt  Diana,"  where  the  idol  of  old  Hum 
phrey  Meave's  heart  was  not  a  woman  but  a 
statue,  the  same  leitmotiv  recurs  in  the  concluding 
paragraph,  "  Now  at  last  we  understand  each 
other." 

The  other  tragic  motive,  that  of  the  inexorable 
demands  of  social  traditions,  the  unwritten  law  of 
noblesse  oblige,  we  find  forming  the  very  warp 
and  woof  of  all  Mrs.  Wharton's  bigger  and  more 
serious  efforts.  In  The  House  of  Mirth,  Lily  Bart 
is  tossed  as  helplessly  as  a  cork  in  the  whirls  and 
eddies  of  the  social  stream — tossed  and  buffeted 
and  finally  dragged  under  with  her  eyes  wide  open 
to  her  own  helplessness.  In  The  Valley  of  Deci 
sion,  Odo  Valsecca  and  Fulvia  Vivaldi  sacrifice 


EDITH  WHARTON  175 

their  happiness  to  the  obligations  of  rank,  a 
prince's  duty  to  his  people ;  and  they  do  this  not 
in  the  spirit  of  generous  sacrifice,  but  rather  be 
cause  they  recognize  the  impossibility  of  doing 
anything  else.  And  so  again  in  Madame  de 
Treymes,  even  an  American  finds  that  all  the 
vaunted  freedom  and  independence  of  our  republic 
avails  nothing  when  confronted  by  the  impalpable 
yet  unyielding  wall  of  French  family  tradition  and 
prejudice. 

So  much  for  the  general  character  of  Mrs. 
Wharton's  situations  and  problems.  Before  turn 
ing  to  take  a  more  specific  glance  at  some  of  the 
separate  stories,  it  is  well  to  get  the  following 
points  clearly  in  mind  regarding  her  technique  of 
construction.  Mrs.  Wharton  is  one  of  those  ex 
ceptional  writers  who  do  not  greatly  concern 
themselves  with  conventional  rules  of  length  and 
breadth.  Economy  of  means  is  a  principle  which 
never  binds  her  against  her  will.  Her  short  sto 
ries  frequently  lengthen  out  into  the  structure  and 
dimensions  of  a  novelette;  her  novelettes  might  so 
easily  have  been  expanded  into  full-length  novels. 
She  writes  apparently  to  suit  herself,  in  whatever 
way  the  narrative  comes  most  naturally  to  her.  A 
Maupassant  with  a  different  ideal  of  story  struc 
ture,  a  more  relentless  self-discipline,  would  have 
used  a  vigorous  pruning  knife  on  almost  any  of 
her  stories  and  gained,  it  might  be,  sharper  ef- 


176  EDITH  WHARTON 

fects,  but  at  the  sacrifice  of  much  delightful  clev 
erness  and  some  rare  and  subtle  half-tones.  We 
must  accept  Mrs.  Wharton  as  she  is,  recognizing 
frankly  that  she  is  one  of  those  writers  who  must 
do  the  thing  their  own  way  if  they  are  to  do  it 
at  all — but  do  not  let  us  fall  into  the  widespread 
error  of  assuming  that  because  her  stories  are 
so  remarkably  good  she  necessarily  has  a  flawless 
technique. 

It  would  be  impracticable  as  well  as  bewildering 
to  attempt  a  detailed  survey  of  all  or  even  a  ma 
jority  of  Mrs.  Wharton's  stories.  We  must  nec 
essarily  make  a  slender  choice,  touching  only  the 
higher  places.  The  first  volume,  however,  The 
Greater  Inclination,  needs  closer  attention  for  the 
purpose  of  pointing  out  some  structural  weak 
nesses.  The  opening  story,  "  The  Muse's  Trag 
edy,"  deals  with  a  young  critic's  interest  in  an 
older  woman  who  in  earlier  years  was  the  source 
of  inspiration  to  a  now  deceased  poet.  Danyers, 
the  critic,  has  learned  to  know  Mrs.  Anerton  first 
as  the  "  Sylvia  "  of  Vincent  Rendell's  verse ;  sec 
ondly,  through  the  gossip  of  a  quite  negligible 
woman,  Mrs.  Memorall ;  thirdly,  by  direct  associa 
tion  with  Mrs.  Anerton  herself,  and,  lastly, 
through  her  voluntary  self-revelation  when  in  one 
sentence  she  not  only  destroys  Danyer's  hopes,  but 
sweeps  away  the  entire  legend  that  had  gathered 
around  her:  "It  is  because  Vincent  Rendell 


EDITH  WHARTON  177 

didn't  love  me  that  there  is  no  hope  for  you." 
Now  the  central  idea  of  this  story  is  clear  as  crys 
tal,  the  tragedy  of  an  unloved  woman  as  seen 
through  the  eyes  of  another  man.  Two  men  and 
one  woman,  and  a  single  point  of  view:  that,  I 
think,  is  the  way  Mrs.  Wharton  would  have  writ 
ten  the  story  ten  years  later;  she 'would  have  done 
it  more  in  the  manner  of  "  The  Dilettante,"  and 
by  doing  so  have  gained  in  power. 

"  A  Journey,"  Mrs.  Wharton's  second  story, 
offers  one  of  the  strongest  situations  she  ever  ,. 
used :  a  woman,  bringing  her  invalid  husband  home 
to  New  York,  discovers  in  the  morning,  shortly 
after  leaving  Buffalo,  that  he  is  lying  dead  in  his 
berth.  To  avoid  being  put  off  the  train  she  all 
day  long  keeps  up  the  pretense  that  he  is  too  ill 
to  be  disturbed,  and  breaks  down  under  the  strain 
only  at  the  moment  when  the  train  glides  into 
the  Grand  Central  Station.  Now  the  greatness 
of  a  short  story  very  largely  depends  upon  the 
trick  of  choosing  all  details  of  structure  with  the 
idea  of  making  each  in  turn  add  its  share  to  the 
poignancy  of  the  situation.  In  the  present  case 
it  seems  axiomatic  that  the  ultimate  tragedy  of 
the  situation  would  depend  upon  the  degree  of 
affection  that  the  wife  felt  for  the  dead  man. 
Mrs.  Wharton  has  chosen  to  tell  us  without  re 
serve  that  the  wife  had  ceased  to  care  for  him 
at  all.  She  is  a  frail  woman,  physically  unstrung, 


178  EDITH  WHARTON 

a  little  frightened  at  her  isolation  and  helpless 
ness;  but  that  ultimate  turn  of  the  screw  which 
comes  of  a  great  personal  bereavement  is  missing. 
And  thirdly,  we  come  to  that  much-praised 
story,  "  The  Pelican  " ;  the  history  of  a  woman, 
who,  finding  herself  a  widow  with  a  small  child 
and  no  property,  undertakes  to  support  herself  by 
lecturing  in  hotel  parlors  and  before  women's 
clubs.  She  has  a  scant  mentality,  but  she  makes 
a  moderate  success,  "  thanks  to  her  upper  lip,  her 
dimple  and  her  Greek  " — thanks  also  to  encyclo 
pedias  and  an  indulgent  public  that  sympathizes 
with  her  desire  to  educate  her  boy.  Thirty  years 
later  she  is  still  making  the  rounds  of  clubs  and 
parlors  for  the  purpose  of  raising  money  to  edu 
cate  the  same  boy.  Now  the  crucial  moment  of 
the  story  comes  when  the  boy,  a  bearded  man  of 
thirty,  runs  across  her  at  a  hotel,  discovers  her 
subterfuge  and  demands  an  explanation.  All  this 
is  natural  enough ;  but  the  story  is  told  in  the  first 
person  by  an  old  friend  of  the  mother;  the  son 
drags  this  old  friend,  a  stranger  to  him,  into  his 
mother's  presence,  and  before  him  denounces  her 
in  terms  that  make  one  wince.  His  whole  manner 
is  in  bad  taste — perhaps  Mrs.  Wharton  meant 
him  to  be  precisely  that  kind  of  a  man,  but  one 
doubts  it.  At  all  events,  if  she  were  writing  that 
story  to-day  she  would  not  have  made  him  a  man 
of  quite  that  kind. 


EDITH  WHARTON  179 

In  this  way  we  might  take  up  those  early  stories 
one  by  one  and  show  how  they  miss  that  finer  per 
fection  which  Mrs.  Wharton  began  to  show  in 
Crucial  Instances,  and  which  she  shows  so  trium 
phantly  in  The  Descent  of  Man.  It  is  hard  in 
speaking  of  this  third  volume  to  discriminate  in 
favor  of  any  particular  stories — they  are  all  so 
extremely  good.  In  the  one  that  lends  its  title 
to  the  book  we  have  the  delightful  irony  of  the 
struggle  of  old  Professor  Linyard  between  the 
hobby  of  his  life  on  the  one  hand  and  the  prac 
tical  needs  of  daily  sustenance  on  the  other.  His 
heart  is  in  "  the  ethereal  reactions  of  the  infusoria 
and  the  unconscious  cerebrations  of  the  Amoeba  " ; 
he  has  contempt  for  the  world  at  large,  and  writes 
what  he  thinks  to  be  a  biting  satire  on  the  modern 
popular  thirst  for  books  of  pseudo-science.  But 
the  public  insists  on  taking  his  satiric  volume,  The 
Vital  Thing,  in  earnest  and  on  making  a  lion  of 
him;  and  when  we  take  leave  of  the  poor  pro 
fessor  he  is  still  planning  some  time  or  other  to 
go  back  to  his  serious  work  in  life,  the  Amoeba, — 
but  he  has  just  signed  a  profitable  contract  for 
a  sequel  to  The  Vital  Thing. 

But  unquestionably,  if  we  must  discriminate, 
we  should  do  so  in  favor  of  "  The  Other  Two," 
the  story  of  a  woman  twice  divorced  and  a  third 
time  wedded.  When  Waythorn  married  Alice 
Varick,  who  had  earlier  been  Alice  Haskett  and 


180  EDITH  WHARTON 

had  brought  with  her  Haskett's  little  daughter, 
"  he  had  fancied  that  a  woman  can  shed  her  past 
like  a  man."  But  in  this  he  was  to  learn  slowly 
that  he  was  mistaken.  Both  of  his  predecessors 
are  still  alive;  both  of  them,  by  a  series  of  quite 
natural  coincidences,  come  into  contact  with  him 
self  and  Alice,  partly  through  business  relations, 
partly  through  social  exigencies.  He  rebels  at 
first  fiercely,  yet  impotently ;  then  little  by  little 
accepts  the  inevitable;  and  the  curtain  falls  at 
last  on  the  group  of  all  three  husbands,  past  and 
present,  assembled  in  Waythorn's  sitting-room 
with  Alice  placidly  pouring  tea  for  them.  There 
is  not  a  single  brush  stroke,  a  single  touch  of  color 
in  the  whole  picture  that  one  could  afford  to  alter. 
It  is  a  little  masterpiece  of  its  kind,  a  deliciously 
ironical  apotheosis  of  conventionalism. 

These  examples  suffice  to  show  the  peculiar  and 
inimitable  quality  of  Mrs.  Wharton's  gift  for  the 
short  story,  when  she  is  at  her  best.  The  later 
stories  differ  often  in  their  specific  kind,  but 
scarcely  any  of  them  show  a  higher  excellence  than 
she  had  already  attained  in  The  Descent  of  Man. 
It  is  a  temptation  to  linger  over  such  a  delicate 
piece  of  artistry  as  "  The  Daunt  Diana,"  in  which 
an  impecunious  art  collector,  after  having  long 
and  hopelessly  coveted  a  famous  collection  of  rare 
antiques,  unexpectedly  inherits  a  fortune,  buys 
the  collection  and  then  finds  himself  more  unhappy 


EDITH  WHARTON  181 

than  before,  because  the  collection  is  not  really 
his, — it  has  not  been  gathered  slowly  and  labo 
riously,  piece  by  piece;  it  lacks  that  ultimate  zest 
known  to  all  true  collectors,  that  of  pursuit  and 
conquest.  He  has  no  other  remedy  than  to  sell 
the  collection  at  auction,  scatter  it  to  the  four 
corners  of  Europe,  make  the  greater  part  of  it 
practically  inaccessible,  and  then — begin  over 
again  and  squander  the  residue  of  his  fortune  in 
tracking  down  and  buying  back  each  one  of  the 
scattered  treasures.  Then,  again,  there  is  "  The 
Letters,"  a  cruel  little  story  of  a  man's  easy-going 
selfishness  and  a  woman's  limitless  tolerance. 
When  Vincent  Deering  is  left  a  widower,  it  seems 
to  Lizzie  West,  who  for  years  has  been  his  little 
daughter's  daily  teacher  and  companion,  and  for 
months  has  listened  to  his  protestations  of  love, 
that  now,  after  a  decent  interval,  they  may  marry. 
Deering  is  an  artist  and  has  made  his  home  in 
France ;  but  now  money  complications  summon 
him  to  America.  Lizzie  writes  to  him,  at  first  each 
day,  then  once  a  week,  then  at  longer  intervals; 
but  never  a  line  comes  back  from  him.  Two  years 
pass ;  then,  one  day,  she  casually  runs  across  him 
in  a  restaurant.  At  heart  she  is  unchanged,  but 
externally  she  is  a  different  Lizzie  from  the  one 
he  knew  and  forgot.  She  has  had  a  small  fortune 
left  her  by  a  distant  relative ;  and  prosperity  has 
already  set  its  mark  upon  her.  Deering  finds  an 


182  EDITH  WHARTON 

ingenious  and  convincing  explanation  for  his  long 
silence, — an  explanation  that  sets  him  in  a  noble 
light  of  self-sacrifice;  and  swept  along  in  the  full 
tide  of  his  eloquence,  Lizzie  forgives  him,  and  sur 
renders  herself  and  her  fortune.  It  is  not  until 
some  time  after  their  marriage  that  she  accident 
ally  comes  across,  in  an  old  trunk,  all  her  former 
letters  to  him.  There  is  nothing  strange  in  the 
mere  fact  of  finding  them ;  it  is  the  further  detail 
that  they  are  unopened,  that  he  never  took  the 
trouble  to  break  their  seals,  that  brings  enlighten 
ment.  In  her  first  passionate  resentment,  she 
wants  him  to  know  that  she  has  found  him  out, 
wants  to  taunt  him  with  his  shallowness  and  his 
hypocrisy,  and  then  to  leave  him.  And  some  such 
ending  would  have  been  the  blunder  of  a  lesser  tal 
ent.  Mrs.  Wharton  was  wiser  than  that ;  she  knew 
that  for  the  Lizzie  Wests  of  this  world,  though  an 
idol  may  be  shattered,  there  remains  no  resource 
but  to  go  on  worshiping  the  fragments :  "  She 
understood  now,  ...  he  was  not  the  hero  of  her 
dreams,  but  he  was  the  man  she  loved." 

But  to  speak  separately  of  each  short  story 
which  for  one  reason  or  another  stands  out  con 
spicuously  beyond  its  neighbors  in  these  several 
volumes  would  be  to  consume  a  disproportionate 
space  and  time  upon  only  one  side  of  Mrs.  Whar- 
ton's  literary  activities.  She  began  by  proving 
her  easy  mastery  over  the  short-story  form;  the 


EDITH  WHARTON  183 

interesting  question  remained  whether  she  would 
be  equally  dexterous  in  her  management  of  struc 
ture  in  the  full-length  novel.  For  this  reason  it 
is  worth  while  to  examine  at  some  length  her  first 
and  most  ambitious  experiment  in  that  direction, 
The  Valley  of  Decision.  She  was  fortunate  at 
the  outset  in  her  choice  of  a  subject  peculiarly 
congenial  to  her  temperament  and  acquired  tastes. 
Her  ambition  was  to  sum  up,  in  a  single  volume, 
Italian  life  as  a  whole  in  the  latter  half  of  the 
eighteenth  century,  that  crucial  settecento,  which 
has  aptly  been  compared  to  the  closing  act  of  a 
tragedy.  It  was  a  period  of  fallacious  cairn, 
following  the  war  of  the  Austrian  Succession, 
when  beneath  the  surface  all  Italy  was  seething 
with  undercurrents  of  rebellion  against  the  old 
established  order  of  things ;  when  "  the  little 
Italian  courts  were  still  dozing  in  fancied  se 
curity  under  the  wing  of  Bourbon  and  Hapsburg 
suzerains  " ;  when  clergy  and  nobles  still  clung 
tenaciously  to  their  class  privileges  and  united  in 
their  efforts  to  repress  the  spread  of  learning; 
when  throngs  of  the  ignorant  and  superstitious 
still  crowded  the  highroads  to  the  shrines  of  popu 
lar  saints,  and  a  small  but  growing  number  of 
enlightened  spirits  met  in  secret  conclave  to  dis 
cuss  new  and  forbidden  doctrines  of  philosophy 
and  science.  It  is  a  big  subject  and  one  full  of 
epic  values — a  subject  which  it  is  easy  to  imagine 


184  EDITH  WHARTON 

a  Balzac  or  a  Tolstoy  treating  in  the  bold,  sweep 
ing,  impressionistic  way  that  it  demands.  But  it 
was  not  easy  to  imagine  in  advance  what  an  in 
trospective  writer  such  as  Mrs.  Wharton  had 
hitherto  shown  herself  could  make  of  such  a  theme. 
That  the  resulting  volume  showed  much  compara 
tive  excellence  came  as  a  pleasant  surprise.  She 
brought  to  her  task  no  small  amount  of  erudition ; 
she  was  saturated  to  her  finger  tips  with  the  his 
torical  facts  of  the  period:  the  motley  and  con 
fusing  tangle  of  petty  dukedoms,  the  warring 
claims  of  Austria  and  of  Spain.  She  gave  us  not 
merely  a  broad  canvas  but  a  moving  panorama  of 
the  life  of  those  restless  times,  presenting  with  a 
certain  dramatic  power  and  a  clear  sense  of  rela 
tive  values,  the  discontent  of  the  masses ;  the  petty 
intrigues  of  Church  and  aristocracy;  the  gilded 
uselessness  of  the  typical  fine  lady  with  her  cava- 
liere  servente,  her  pet  monkey  and  her  parrot ;  the 
base  ignorance  of  the  peasantry ;  the  disorders  and 
license  of  the  Bohemian  world,  the  strolling  play 
ers  and  mountebanks — in  short,  all  the  various 
social  strata  and  sub-strata  of  the  period.  The 
book  is  less  a  novel  than  a  sort  of  cultured  Sit- 
tengeschichte  of  the  epoch,  comprehensive,  thor 
ough  and  rather  ponderous.  It  is  not  surprising 
to  find  now  and  again  a  certain  avoidance  of  the 
concrete  and  the  specific;  that  is  a  defect  com 
monly  found  in  historical  fiction  of  any  period. 


EDITH  WHARTON  185 

It  is  always  safer  to  leave  out  a  detail  than  to 
run  the  risk  of  putting  one  in  that  has  not  been 
amply  verified.  Yet  curiously  enough  The  Valley 
of  Decision  lacks,  much  of  the  time,  another  ele 
ment  which  needed  no  verification :  namely,  the 
sunshine,  the  blue  sky,  the  redolence  of  warmth 
and  color  and  surface  gaiety  which  is  the  very  es 
sence  of  Italy — which  makes  itself  felt  in  every 
page  of  Stendhal's  Chartreuse  de  Parme;  is  woven 
into  the  woof  and  warp  of  Romola,  and  goes  far 
towards  redeeming  the  tawdry  sensationalism  of 
Ouida.  There  are  times  when  one  cannot  help 
suspecting  that  Mrs.  Wharton  has  something  in 
common  with  her  hero,  who,  she  tells  us,  "  had 
lived  through  twelve  Italian  summers  without 
sense  of  the  sun-steeped  quality  of  an  atmosphere 
that  even  in  shade  gives  each  object  a  golden 
salience.  He  was  conscious  of  it  now  only  as  it 
suggested  fingering  a  missal  stiff  with  gold  leaf 
and  edged  with  a  swarming  diversity  of  buds  and 
insects."  Her  consciousness  of  nature  is,  in  this 
volume,  of  much  the  same  sort;  when  she  pauses 
to  describe  it,  she  usually  does  so  from  a  purely 
esthetic  point  of  view,  with  an  artist's  profes 
sional  enjoyment  of  some  grouping  of  rocks  or 
trees  which  would  make  an  effective  picture,  "  a 
scene  which  Salvator  might  have  painted  " ;  or  a 
bend  in  the  road  where  "  the  roadside  started  into 
detail  like  the  foreground  of  some  minute  Dutch 


186  EDITH  WHARTON 

painter."  And  these  descriptions  are  always  of 
the  briefest  character.  It  is  only  when  she  be 
comes  interested  in  some  matter  of  esthetic  or 
philosophic  import  that  she  permits  her  pen  to  run 
freely.  It  is  worth  while  to  quote  even  at  some 
length  a  characteristic  passage  of  this  latter  type, 
because  such  passages  constitute  a  formidable  pro 
portion  of  the  pages  in  this  particular  volume: 

In  the  semi-Parisian  capital,  where  French  archi 
tects  designed  the  king's  pleasure-houses  and  the  no 
bility  imported  their  boudoir-panelings  from  Paris 
and  their  damask  hangings  from  Lyons,  Benedetto 
Alfieri  represented  the  old  classic  tradition,  the  tradi 
tion  of  the  "  grand  manner,"  which  had  held  its  own 
through  all  later  variations  of  taste,  running  parallel 
with  the  barocchismo  of  the  seventeenth  century  and 
the  effeminate  caprices  of  the  rococo  period.  He  had 
lived  much  in  Rome,  in  the  company  of  men  like 
Winckelmann  and  Maffei,  in  that  society  where  the 
revival  of  classical  research  was  being  forwarded  by 
the  liberality  of  princes  and  cardinals  and  by  the 
indefatigable  zeal  of  the  scholars  in  their  pay.  From 
this  center  of  esthetic  reaction  Alfieri  had  returned  to 
the  Gallicized  Turin,  with  its  preference  for  the 
graceful  and  ingenious  rather  than  for  the  large,  the 
noble,  the  restrained;  bringing  to  bear  on  the  taste 
of  his  native  city  the  influence  of  a  view  raised  but 
perhaps  narrowed  by  close  study  of  the  past;  the 
view  of  a  generation  of  architects  in  whom  archeo- 
logical  curiosity  had  stifled  the  artistic  instinct,  and 


EDITH  WHARTON  187 

who,  instead  of  assimilating  the  spirit  of  the  past  like 
their  great  predecessors,  were  engrossed  in  a  sterile 
restoration  of  the  letter. 

It  requires  a  certain  conscious  effort  to  disinter 
from  under  all  this  superimposed  erudition  the 
essential  central  thread  of  the  story.  The  stage 
setting  is  an  imaginary  petty  dukedom,  Pianura, 
in  the  north  of  Italy,  owing  allegiance  to  Charles 
Ferdinand  on  the  one  hand,  and  attached  by  mar 
riage  to  the  house  of  Hapsburg  on  the  other.  The 
hero,  Odo  Valsecca,  is  of  the  Old  Order,  heir  pre 
sumptive  to  the  throne  of  Pianura,  and  kept  from 
the  succession  only  by  an  invalid  cousin  and  the 
latter^s  sickly  child.  In  his  character  and  tem 
perament  Odo  represents  the  conflicting  tenden 
cies  of  the  times.  He  is  in  sympathy  with  the  new 
ideas  of  progress  and  liberty,  and  has  brief  flashes 
of  energy  and  enthusiasm.  But  they  soon  burn 
themselves  out,  for  he  is  fundamentally  lethargic 
and  indifferent,  inheriting  the  fatal  taint  of  his 
house.  The  heroine,  Fulvia  Vivaldi,  represents 
the  New  Order.  She  is  the  daughter  of  a  pro 
fessor  of  philosophy,  who  has  suffered  exile  for 
his  temerity  in  teaching  the  forbidden  learning. 
Under  Fulvia's  influence  Odo  becomes  an  eager 
disciple  of  the  new  philosophy,  and  he  is  on  the 
point  of  sacrificing  his  prospects  and  accompany 
ing  her  to  France,  when  the  death  of  his  cousin 


188  EDITH  WHARTON 

unexpectedly  makes  him  Duke  of  Pianura.  To 
the  man  and  the  girl  his  duty  is  plain — this  is  so 
typical  of  Mrs.  Wharton ! — the  idea  of  rebellion 
against  fate  hardly  seems  to  occur  to  them;  he 
must  accept  his  burden  and  devote  his  life  to  se 
curing  for  the  people  of  Pianura  the  liberty  to 
which  they  are  entitled.  As  for  Fulvia,  she  may 
either  continue  on  her  way  alone  to  Paris,  or  she 
may  remain  at  Pianura  under  conditions  which 
she  will  not  accept: 

"  The  Regent's  mistress  ?  "  she  said  slowly.  "  The 
key  to  the  treasury,  the  back-door  to  preferment,  the 
secret  trafficker  in  titles  and  appointments  ?  That  is 
what  I  should  stand  for — and  it  is  not  to  such  serv 
ices  that  you  must  even  appear  to  owe  your  power.  I 
will  not  say  that  I  have  my  own  work  to  do;  for  the 
dearest  service  I  could  perform  would  be  to  help 
you  in  yours.  But  to  do  this  I  must  stand  aside.  To 
be  near  you,  I  must  go  from  you.  To  love  you,  I 
must  give  you  up." 

No  one  can  say  that  this  was  not  excellent  rea 
soning.  But  three  years  later  Fulvia  changes  her 
mind,  returns  to  Pianura,  and  accepts  the  very 
conditions  which  she  previously  so  emphatically 
refused.  The  result  is  an  impression  of  incon 
sistency,  a  feeling  that  the  Fulvia  who  went  away 
and  the  Fulvia  who  came  back  are  two  quite  dif 
ferent  persons.  Apparently,  however,  her  return 


EDITH  WHARTON  189 

was  a  structural  necessity,  in  order  to  pave  the 
way  for  an  effective  and  tragic  ending.  Fulvia 
spurs  Odo  on  to  give  the  people  a  liberal  con 
stitution  for  which  they  are  not  yet  ready,  and 
in  the  midst  of  the  ensuing  riots  receives  in  her 
heart  the  shot  intended  for  her  lover.  Such  in 
brief  is  the  substance  of  a  story  which  the  gen 
eral  tendency  of  criticism  has  been  to  overvalue. 
The  characters  are  clearly  and  conscientiously 
drawn,  the  drama  in  which  they  play  their  part 
deals  with  vital  questions  of  life  and  liberty  and 
human  happiness ;  yet  for  the  most  part  they 
leave  us  cold;  they  fail  to  touch  the  keynote  of 
responsive  sympathy.  The  explanation  lies,  of 
course,  in  the  author's  willingness  to  subordinate 
the  human  interest  of  her  story,  the  individual 
joys  and  sorrows  of  her  characters  to  the  expo 
sition  of  her  main  theme,  the  sociological  condi 
tions  of  Eighteenth  Century  Italy.  In  other 
words,  at  the  time  of  writing  The  Valley  of  Deci 
sion  she  had  not  yet  learned  the  trick  of  that 
delicate  balance  between  the  general  and  the  spe 
cific  theme,  which  is  the  hall-mark  of  the  strongest 
and  biggest  type  of  fiction. 

There  remain  three  other  volumes  which  de 
mand  specific  notice :  The  House  of  Mirth,  Madame 
de  Treymes  and  The  Fruit  of  the  Tree.  Two  in 
termediate  volumes,  The  Touchstone  and  Sanc 
tuary,  although  highly  characteristic,  are  of  no 


190  EDITH  WHARTON 

more  significance  in  relation  to  Mrs.  Wharton's 
growth  as  an  artist  than  the  majority  of  her 
short  stories,  perhaps  rather  less  significant  than 
just  a  few  of  them.  The  Fruit  of  the  Tree,  al 
though  the  latest  of  her  long  novels,  may  well  be 
put  out  of  the  way  first,  as  representing  the  great 
est  gulf  between  purpose  and  accomplishment  that 
any  of  her  books  afford.  The  story  opens  with 
an  accident  in  a  woolen  mill  by  which  an  employee 
loses  an  arm.  The  affair  would  be  hushed  up  but 
for  the  efforts  of  John  Amherst,  assistant  fore 
man,  and  Justine  Brent,  hospital  nurse,  both  of 
whom  lose  their  positions  in  consequence.  The 
mills  are  run  in  the  interest  of  capitalists  and  in 
defiance  of  factory  regulations;  they  are  owned 
by  a  young  widow,  Bessie  Westmore,  who  has  been 
content  to  shirk  her  responsibility  and  leave  mat 
ters  in  the  hands  of  her  trustees.  John  Amherst 
marries  the  widow,  believing  that  he  has  convinced 
her  of  the  justice  of  his  plans  to  reform  the  mills; 
and  here  begins  a  long,  slow  struggle  and  an  in 
evitable  estrangement, — since  Bessie,  contrary  to 
her  husband's  expectations,  cannot  see  why  her 
money  should  be  thrown  away  on  clubrooms  and 
gymnasiums  for  the  workmen,  when  she  needs 
new  gowns,  new  carriages,  new  automobiles.  Es 
trangement  begets  defiance;  and  Bessie  deliber 
ately  risks  her  life  on  a  horse  that  Amherst  has 
forbidden  her  to  ride.  The  result  is  a  disas- 


EDITH  WHARTON  191 

trous  fall  and  serious  damage  to  the  spine,  near 
the  base  of  the  brain.  Her  husband  cannot  reach 
her  for  weeks ;  he  is  traveling  in  South  America. 
The  doctors  know  that  there  is  not  one  chance  in 
a  thousand  for  her  recovery ;  but  there  is  a  hope, 
through  the  cruel  skill  of  modern  surgery,  of 
keeping  her  alive  until  Amherst  can  arrive.  But 
this  can  be  done  only  at  the  cost  of  unimaginable 
torture,  an  augmenting  anguish  that  wrings  from 
the  sufferer  a  ceaseless,  hoarse,  inarticulate  cry 
increasing  in  intensity  with  the  slow  passage  of 
the  days.  Justine  Brent,  the  trained  nurse,  who 
has  been  a  lifelong  friend  of  Bessie,  finds  her  pa 
tient's  agony  more  than  she  can  bear  to  witness, 
and  mercifully  cuts  it  short  with  an  extra  hypo 
dermic  of  morphine.  She  believes  in  her  conscience 
that  she  has  done  right;  and  not  a  doubt  assails 
her  until,  in  the  course  of  years,  she  herself  be 
comes  the  wife  of  John  Amherst,  and  he  comes 
to  know  that  in  the  eyes  of  the  law  she  would  be 
regarded  as  the  murderess  of  his  first  wife.  The 
plot  of  this  story,  in  so  far  as  it  concerns  the 
right  of  the  medical  profession  to  shorten  suf 
fering  where  a  cure  is  hopeless,  is  not  a  new  theme. 
It  has  been  briefly  but  poignantly  handled  in  a 
short  story  byNVIrs.  Atherton ;  it  has  been  worked 
out  at  great  length  by  Edouard  Rod  in  La 
Sacrifice.  Mrs.  Wharton  has  nothing  new  to  add 
to  this  issue;  and  by  bringing  in  factory  reform 


192  EDITH  WHARTON 

and  labor  questions  she  has  simply  obscured  her 
maim  theme. 

,The  House  of  Mirth  is  a  book  of  altogether 
different  caliber,  a  big,  vital,  masterly  book  of  its 
ty^pe  and  one  that  utterly  refuses  to  be  forgotten. 
Like  so  many  of  Mrs.  Wharton's  earlier  and 
shorter  stories,  it  is  a  trenchant  satire  on  the 
manners  and  customs  of  certain  social  strata  in 
New  York  of  to-day.  The  pages  are  not 'over 
crowded  with  figures ;  yet  these  are  so  wisely 
chosen  and  so  deftly  sketched  in  as  to  give  an  im 
pression  of  many-sided,  kaleidoscopic  life.  The 
book,  however,  belongs  primarily  to  the  type  of 
,  the  one-character  story.  It  is  a  history  of  just 
one  woman,  Lily  Bart,  through  a  few  crucial 
years.  The  remaining  personages  in  the  story, 
whether  few  or  many,  are  mere  background, 
shadow  shapes  that  come  and  go,  with  no  other 
effect  than  to  make  the  central  figure  stand  out 
in  sharper  relief.  Lily  Bart  at  the  opening  of 
the  story  is,  in  spite  of  her  nine  and  twenty 
years,  still  essentially  a  girl,  with  a  girl's  un 
quenchable  desire  for  a  continuation  of  the  ease 
and  luxury,  pleasure  and  adulation  that  have  hith 
erto  been  her  birthright.  But  her  parents  are 
'dead;  her  resources  are  almost  exhausted;  and 
she  has  all  the  helplessness  which  characterizes 
those  brought  up  in  accordance  with  the  sheltered- 
life  system,  when  confronted  with  the  elemental 


EDITH  WHARTON  193 

problem  of  self-support.  She  has  in  fact  only 
one  obvious  path  open  to  her,  namely,  marriage; 
she  may  marry  for  money  and  despise  herself; 
or  she  may  marry  for  love  and  repent  at  leisure, 
or  else  suffer  the  equally  probable  pain  of  seeing 
her  husband  do  sufficient  repenting  for  them  both. 
So  she  temporizes ;  and  meanwhile  puts  off  the  evil 
hour  from  week  to  week,  living  at  the  expense  of 
her  friends  in  a  round  of  visits,  playing  recklessly 
at  bridge,  and,  of  course,  losing  heavily,  and  fool 
ishly  accepting  a  rather  large  loan  from  a  mar 
ried  man  under  the  thin  pretense  that  he  has  been 
speculating  for  her  and  has  sold  out  at  a  profit. 
But  these  details  merely  skim  the  surface  of  a 
book  which  quite  wonderfully  and  unsparingly 
probes  into  the  deepest  recesses  of  a  woman's  heart, 
dragging  to  the  surface  much  that  she  would 
have  refused  to  reveal  even  to  herself.  And  back 
of  this  merciless  analysis,  and  perhaps  even  bigger 
than  it,  is  the  sense  of  an  inexorable  logic  of  cause 
and  effect  which  leads  us  by  closely  correlated 
steps  from  the  moment  when  Lily  Bart  first  breaks 
one  of  the  unwritten  laws  of  her  social  set  by  a 
brief  visit  to  a  man's  bachelor  apartments  down 
to  the  hour  when  she  renders  her  final  account  and 
the  empty  chloral  bottle  tells  its  story.*  It  is  easy 
for  those  who  echo  the  modern  cry  for  a  spir 
itual  "  uplift "  in  fiction  to  carp  at  The  House 
of  Mirth.  But  the  fact  remains  that  the  name  of 


194  EDITH  WHARTON 

Lily  Bart  will  be  handed  down  in  the  list  of  hero 
ines  with  whom  the  well-read  person  is  expected 
to  be  acquainted. 

And  now,  quite  briefly,  let  us  look  at  Madame 
de  Treymes,  a  slender,  unpretentious  little  volume, 
which  I  believe,  none  the  less,  to  represent  Mrs. 
Wharton's  high-water  mark  of  attainment,  almost 
flawless  in  structure  and  in  content.  It  is  an 
extremely  simple  story.  John  Durham  had  in  the 
"  old  unrestricted  New  York  days  "  known  Fanny 
Frisbee  long  and  intimately,  but  it  never  occurred 
to  him  to  find  her  desirable  until,  fifteen  years 
later,  he  met  her  once  more  in  Paris  as  Madame 
de  Malrive,  separated,  but  not  yet  divorced  from 
her  husband.  Her  estrangement  from  her  hus 
band  was  now  of  five  years'  standing;  so  John 
Durham  could  see  nothing  premature  or  indelicate 
in  urging  his  own  claims  and  persuading  her  to 
seek  her  freedom  through  the  courts.  But  he 
was  destined  to  learn  that  in  France,  especially 
among  the  old  families,  there  is  a  hereditary  code 
so  powerful  as  to  make  appeal  to  the  courts  well- 
nigh  hopeless.  Durham  cannot  understand ;  the 
law  is  the  law,  it  all  seems  so  simple.  But  Fanny 
de  Malrive  knows  better;  she  has  a  little  son 
whom  she  has  pledged  to  bring  up  as  a  French 
man  ;  he  is  only  half  hers  even  now,  and  she  must 
do  nothing  that  will  lessen  her  hold  upon  him, 
nothing  that  her  husband's  mother  and  sister  and 


EDITH  WHARTON  195 

uncle,  the  Abbe,  do  not  approve.  This  sister, 
Madame  de  Treymes,  holds  the  key  to  the  situa 
tion.  If  Durham  can  meet  her  and  win  from  her 
a  statement  whether  or  not  the  family  will  oppose 
a  suit  for  divorce  he  and  Fanny  will  know  where 
they  stand.  The  main  story  of  the  book  is  the  con 
test  between  Durham  and  Madame  de  Treymes,  the 
duel  of  verbal  finesse  that  is  like  the  crossing  of 
fine,  flexible  rapiers,  and,  lastly,  that  wonderful 
final  thrust  through  which  Madame  de  Treymes 
by  the  very  act  of  granting  what  he  asks  effects 
his  total  overthrow — and  to  her  own  surprise 
hurts  herself  almost  as  keenly  as  she  hurts  him. 
The  book  represents  a  high  development  of  all 
of  Mrs.  Wharton's  admitted  qualities ;  and  beyond 
these  it  has  a  more  perfect  technique  of  form 
and  a  greater  sense  of  real  sympathy  with  the  peo 
ple  of  her  creation  than  anything  she  has  written 
before  it  or  since. 


NEWTON  BOOTH  TARKINGTON 

UPON  renewing  acquaintance  with  The  Gentle 
man  from  Indiana,  from  the  vantage  ground  of  a 
ten-year  interval,  one  realizes  by  what  a  narrow 
margin  Mr.  Tarkington  rescued  the  born  story 
teller  within  him  from  the  would-be  maker  of  pur 
poseful  and  serious  fiction.  This  book  in  fact 
represents  a  parting  of  two  ways,  a  battle-ground 
between  two  opposing  impulses,  two  widely  di 
vergent  views  of  the  aims  and  ambitions  of  a  nov 
elist, — and  for  that  reason  it  fails,  in  spite  of 
occasional  strength,  to  be  a  really  good  book,  a 
piece  of  symmetrical  and  finished  workmanship. 
Although  it  was  his  first  published  work,  The 
Gentleman  from  Indiana  was  far  from  being  Mr. 
Tarkington's  first  attempt  at  fiction.  It  has  often 
been  told  that  the  germ  of  The  Two  Vanrevels  was 
a  short  story  of  two  thousand  words  written  many 
years  earlier;  and  that  while  The  Gentleman  from 
Indiana  was  not  begun  until  1898,  Monsieur 
Beaucaire  was  written  a  year  earlier  and  Cherry 
not  only  antedates  them  both  but  was  accepted  as 
a  two-part  serial  at  a  time  when  its  author  was 
practically  unknown.  In  a  lengthy  critical  study 

196 


NEWTON  BOOTH  TARKINGTON 


NEWTON  BOOTH  TARKINGTON    197 

of  Mr.  Tarkington's  writings,  Arthur  Bartlett 
Maurice  rather  happily  conjectures  that  "  Per 
haps  it  was  of  himself  and  of  his  own  disillusion 
ment  that  he  was  thinking  when  he  described  in 
The  Gentleman  from  Indiana  John  Harkless  oc 
cupied  with  a  realization  that  *  there  had  been  a 
man  in  his  class  whose  ambition  needed  no  re 
straint,  his  promise  was  so  complete — in  the  strong 
belief  of  the  University,  a  belief  that  he  could  not 
help  knowing — and  that  seven  years  to  a  day  from 
his  Commencement  this  man  was  sitting  on  a  fence 
rail  in  Indiana.' '  And  Mr.  Maurice  hereupon 
adds,  "  sitting  on  a  rail-fence  in  Indiana  was  fig 
uratively  just  what  Tarkington  was  doing  from 
1893  to  1899." 

Now,  in  order  to  understand  how  the  author  of 
Monsieur  Beaucaire  ever  happened  to  write  The 
Gentleman  from  Indiana,  it  is  necessary  to  keep 
just  a  few  facts  in  mind.  In  the  first  place,  Mr. 
Tarkington  had  throughout  these  seven  years 
been  vainly  trying  to  obtain  a  public  hearing  and 
had  been  persistently  denied.  Even  after  Cherry 
had  been  accepted  for  magazine  publication,  the 
editor  seems  to  have  had  a  sober  second  thought 
and  the  manuscript  was  side-tracked  until  the  sub 
sequent  success  of  his  other  stories  gave  it  an 
unforeseen  and  extrinsic  value  that  hurried  it  into 
print.  Secondly,  in  the  closing  years  of  the  nine 
teenth  century,  there  came  a  sudden  demand  for 


198    NEWTON  BOOTH  TARKINGTON 

a  rather  serious  type  of  political  novel  and  of 
the  novel  that  professed  to  study  the  social  and 
economic  problems  of  American  life  and  especially 
of  life  in  the  West.  The  times  were  ripe  for  just 
such  books  as  Brand  Whitlock's  Thirteenth  Dis 
trict,  Mr.  Tarkington's  Gentleman  from  Indi 
ana,  The  Virginian  of  Owen  Wister  and,  bigger 
and  greater  than  these,  The  Pit  and  The  Octopus 
of  Frank  Norris  which  were  to  come  later.  It 
was  quite  natural,  quite  pardonable,  that  a  young 
man  in  Mr.  Tarkington's  position,  sobered  by  dis- 
"couragement,  should  have  attempted  for  once  to 
meet  a  specific  popular  demand, — especially  when 
the  attempt  to  meet  it  meant  no  greater  effort 
than  simply  to  open  his  eyes  and  set  down  faith 
fully  what  he  could  see  from  his  viewpoint  on  the 
fence  rail,  and  what  he  thought  about  the  things 
that  he  saw. 

Unfortunately,  this  method  of  work,  which  to 
many  another  writer  is  the  simplest  and  most  con 
genial,  was  one  which  Mr.  Tarkington,  with  the 
best  intentions  in  the  world,  found  himself  un 
able  to  sustain.  He  is  of  those  whose  worship 
of  the  God  of  Things-as-They-Are  is  at  best  an 
outward  show.  The  mantle  of  realism  is  upon 
his  shoulders  a  curious  misfit ;  and  he  has  done 
wisely  in  discarding  it.  The  Gentleman  from  In 
diana  is  a  luminous  object-lesson.  There  are  in 
it  two  interwoven  stories  so  radically  different  in 


NEWTON  BOOTH  TARKINGTON    199 

their  spirit,  their  outlook  upon  life  and  the  key 
in  which  they  are  told  that  it  is  rather  difficult 
to  say  with  any  assurance  which  of  these  two  was 
Mr.  Tarkington's  starting-point,  and  just  what 
important  thought,  if  any,  he  undertook  to  de 
velop.  Apparently  his  theme  was  something  of 
this  nature :  When  a  discouraged  young  man  from 
the  East, — discouraged  because  he  knows  that  he 
has  the  ambition  and  the  energy  to  succeed  but 
lacks  the  opportunity, — finds  himself  at  last  in 
a  somnolent  Western  town  and  by  remorselessly 
driving  himself  day  and  night  succeeds  in  instilling 
some  sort  of  life  into  that  town  and  at  the  same 
time  making  himself  the  most  important  and  most 
respected  of  all  its  citizens:  he  is  quite  likely  not 
to  see  that  success  is  already  holding  out  her  hands 
to  him;  quite  likely  to  feel  that  he  is  stagnating, 
wasting  his  strength  and  his  years  in  a  jumping- 
off  place  from  which  there  is  no  escape, — and  all 
the  while  he  is  building  for  himself  unconsciously 
a  big  and  splendid  future.  This  is  what  I  think 
that  Mr.  Tarkington  was  trying  to  say:  that 
the  surest  way  to  play  a  big  part  before  a  large 
audience  to-morrow,  is  to  play  your  little  part 
before  your  small  audience  to-day  and  to  be  sure 
that  you  play  it  with  all  your  heart  and  all  your 
soul  and  all  your  mind.  The  trouble  with  The 
Gentleman  from  Indiana,  which  might  so  easily 
have  been  made  a  really  big  book,  is  that  in  trying 


200    NEWTON  BOOTH  TARKINGTON 

to  say  this  Mr.  Tarkington  said  it  so  very  badly. 
The  book  makes  one  think  of  a  long  steel  girder 
which  has  buckled  and  broken  in  the  middle  from 
sheer  structural  weakness.  Harkless,  the  young 
Easterner,  who  has  come  to  the  town  of  Plattville 
and  invested  his  last  dollar  in  the  Carlow  County 
Herald,  accomplishes  a  number  of  rather  difficult 
things  with  almost  too  much  ease  and  promptness. 
He  rescues  the  paper  from  a  moribund  condition 
and  makes  it  a  recognized  local  force;  he  drives 
an  unscrupulous  political  boss  from  power,  and 
ushers  in  a  new  era  of  honest  government ;  he  de 
clares  war  against  the  lawless  band  of  "  White- 
Caps,"  who  constitute  the  squalid  settlement  at 
Six-Cross-Roads,  and  for  years  have  terrorized 
the  neighborhood ;  and  his  crusade  results  in  land 
ing  a  considerable  number  of  them  in  state's 
prison.  The  remaining  "  White-Caps,"  however, 
have  sworn  vengeance ;  and  because  he  will  not  take 
their  threats  seriously,  and  will  not  guard  him 
self  properly,  they  catch  him  one  night  on  a  lonely 
road;  and  on  the  morrow  there  remains  no  sign 
of  him  save  some  footprints  in  the  mud  and  tram 
pled  grass.  Suspicion  is  divided  between  the 
"  White-Caps "  and  a  couple  of  "  shell-men," 
whom  Harkless  had  been  instrumental  in  driving 
out  of  town.  Public  opinion  condemns  the 
"  White-Caps,"  and  a  well-equipped  lynching 
party  is  proceeding  to  make  short  work  of  them, 


NEWTON  BOOTH  TARKINGTON    201 

when  a  telegram  arrives  from  the  neighboring  city 
of  Rouen: 

Found  both  shell-men.  One  arrested  at  noon  in  a 
second-hand  clothes  store,  wearing  Harkless's  hat, 
also  trying  to  dispose  torn  full-dress  coat  known  to 
have  been  worn  by  Harkless  last  night.  Stains  on 
lining  believed  blood.  Second  man  found  later  at 
freight-yards  in  empty  lumber  car  left  Plattville 
1  P.M.,  badly  hurt,  shot  and  bruised.  .  .  .  Hurt  man 
taken  to  hospital  unconscious.  Will  die.  Hope  able 
question  him  first  and  discover  whereabouts  body. 

Now  the  details  of  what  happened  at  the  Six- 
Cross-Roads,  and  what  share  the  shell-men  had 
in  it  need  not  concern  us  here.  The  above  tele 
gram  is  quoted  solely  for  the  sake  of  pointing  out 
the  big  dramatic  possibilities  of  the  subsequent 
scene  when  a  delegation  from  Plattville  arrive  at 
the  Rouen  hospital,  in  order  to  take  the  shell- 
man's  dying  confession,  and  the  mass  of  bruised 
flesh  and  broken  bones  opens  its  eyes,  and  the 
white,  scarred  lips  move  and  speak  with  the  voice 
of  Harkless.  This  is  all  good  workmanship ;  the 
surprise,  when  it  comes,  is  complete ;  and  the  whole 
story  has  been  worked  up  slowly,  carefully,  with 
a  painstaking  diligence  of  details,  an  ingenious 
plausibility  that  effectually  veil  the  underlying 
melodrama.  But  it  is  just  at  this  point  that  the 
girder  breaks  and  the  book's  structure  goes  to 


202    NEWTON  BOOTH  TARKINGTON 

pieces.  There  is,  of  course,  the  usual  obligatory 
young  woman  in  the  story, — although  up  to  this 
point  it  has  not  seemed  needful  to  the  present 
writer  to  make  mention  of  her.  She  is  known  as 
Helen  Sherwood,  and,  like  Harkless,  is  an  out 
sider,  being  in  Plattville  only  on  a  visit;  but  in 
reality  she  is  only  the  Sherwoods'  adopted  daugh 
ter,  and  her  father  is  old,  broken-down  Frisbee, 
whom  Harkless  has  befriended  and  saved  from 
drinking  himself  to  death.  Now,  what  Mr.  Tar- 
kington,  in  the  naivete  of  early  authorship,  asks 
us  to  believe  is  this:  that  while  Harkless  lies  in 
the  Rouen  Hospital,  fighting  for  life,  inch  by  inch, 
Helen  Sherwood, — nee  Frisbee, — with  the  courage 
of  utter  ignorance,  rushes  into  the  breach,  and 
with  no  newspaper  training,  no  knowledge  of 
politics,  no  practical  experience  of  life,  proceeds 
to  edit  the  Carlow  County  Herald,  to  increase  its 
size,  to  build  up  its  circulation,  and — most  amaz 
ing  of  all — to  start  a  campaign  in  favor  of  Hark- 
less  that  results  in  securing  him  the  nomination  to 
Congress.  All  this  is  sheer  romanticism,  and  if 
taken  at  its  face  value  is  exceedingly  "  good  fun." 
But,  unfortunately,  the  first  half  of  the  book  was 
conceived  in  a  sane  and  sober  spirit  of  actuality, — 
and  that  is  why  the  first  and  second  section  of  the 
book  part  company  with  a  violence  like  that  of  a 
railway  train  if  a  switch  were  suddenly  misplaced 
beneath  the  middle  car. 


NEWTON  BOOTH  TARKINGTON    203 

The  purpose  of  giving  so  much  space  to  The 
Gentleman  from  Indiana  is  not  solely  in  order  to 
show  its  structural  defects.  It  is  a  book  which 
one  may  quite  sincerely  like  without  being  blind 
to  its  faults.  It  bristles  with  absurdities,  yet  in 
spite  of  them,  one  cannot  help  feeling  the  warm, 
lovable  human  nature  in  its  characters.  To  cre 
ate  characters  that  seem  thoroughly  alive  is  part 
of  the  inborn  gift  of  the  true  story  teller,  and  no 
amount  of  farce  or  melodrama  will  quite  hide  it. 
But  characters  endowed  with  the  breath  of  life  are 
not  the  exclusive  prerogative  of  either  romance  or 
realism.  If  on  the  one  hand  we  have  Major  Pen- 
dennis  and  Colonel  Newcome,  on  the  other  we  have 
D'Artagnan  and  Chicot  the  Jester — equally  alive, 
equally  impossible  to  forget.  It  still  remained  to 
be  seen  which  of  the  two  methods  was  Mr.  Tar- 
kington's  natural  medium.  The  publication  of 
Monsieur  Beaucaire  promptly  solved  the  doubt. 
No  one  but  a  born  romanticist  could  have  writ 
ten  that  dainty  and  consistent  bit  of  fictional 
artistry.  It  had  no  more  serious  excuse  for  ex 
istence  than  a  miniature  on  ivory  or  a  finely-cut 
cameo, — and  it  needed  none.  Its  best  excuse  was 
the  blitheness  of  its  mood,  the  symmetry  of  its 
form,  the  swiftness  of  its  action,  the  tingling  vi 
tality  of  it,  from  start  to  finish.  But  it  immedi 
ately,  and  once  for  all,  defined  Mr.  Tarkington's 
proper  sphere  and  limitations.  It  proved  him 


204    NEWTON  BOOTH  TARKINGTON 

one  of  those  writers  whose  stories,  whenever  and 
wherever  laid,  should  carry  with  them  something 
of  the  "  once-upon-a-time  "  atmosphere, — the  fit 
ting  atmosphere  of  the  story  that  aims  frankly 
to  entertain.  It  reduced  at  once  to  an  absurdity 
the  bare  idea  of  Mr.  Tarkington's  ever  again  at 
tempting  to  write  a  novel  opening  with  such  pro 
saic  actuality  as  "  There  is  a  fertile  stretch  of 
flat  lands  in  Indiana  where  unagrarian  Eastern 
travelers,  glancing  from  car-windows,  shudder 
and  return  their  eyes  to  interior  upholstery." 
From  the  clumsy  heaviness  of  The  Gentleman 
from  Indiana  to  the  debonair  self-mastery 
of  Monsieur  Beaucaire  is  indeed  a  rather  far 
cry. 

But  it  is  precisely  this  type  of  a  storj  which 
has  the  most  to  lose  in  the  retelling.  Something 
of  its  fragile  charm  must  inevitably  brush  off  at 
the  first  careless  touch  like  the  golden  pollen  on  a 
butterfly's  wings.  It  is  less  a  tale  than  an  episode 
in  the  life  of  a  princely  young  Frenchman  who, 
temporarily  out  of  favor  at  court,  is  sojourning 
incognito  in  England  and  falls  under  the  spell  of 
"  gold  and  snow  and  the  blue  sky  of  a  lady's 
eyes."  Now  Monsieur  Beaucaire,  so  it  is  rumored, 
has  come  to  England  as  a  valet  in  the  suite  of 
M.  de  Mirepoix,  the  French  ambassador.  For 
this  reason  he  has  been  publicly  rebuffed  in  the 
pump-room  at  Bath  by  no  less  a  personage  than 


NEWTON  BOOTH  TARKINGTON    205 

Beau  Nash;  and  for  a  time  he  lives  quietly  and 
is  visited  surreptitiously  by  just  a  few  men  of 
fashion,  who  know  him  only  as  a  professional 
gambler  but  believe  that  his  play  is  honest.  The 
story  opens  at  the  moment  when  Beaucaire  catches 
the  Duke  of  Winterset  in  the  act  of  cheating  at 
cards,  and  as  a  price  of  his  silence  forces  Win 
terset  to  introduce  him  into  the  upper  social  cir 
cles  at  Bath  as  the  Due  de  Chateaurien, — of 
Castle-Nowhere.  He  has  only  to  strip  off  his  im 
posing  mustachios  and  his  black  peruque  and  shake 
down  the  sparkling  curls  of  his  yellow  hair  to 
make  the  transformation  complete.  As  Due  de 
Chateaurien,  vouched  for  by  Winterset,  he  meets 
and  woos  the  Lady  Mary  Carlisle,  the  most  beauti 
ful  woman  in  England,  on  whom  Winterset  has 
already  turned  a  covetous  glance.  This  is  the  rea 
son  why  Winterset  does  not  keep  his  pledge  of 
silence,  and  why  he  spreads  the  rumor  that  the 
successful  suitor  for  the  hand  of  Lady  Mary 
Carlisle  is  none  other  than  Victor,  the  barber,  and 
Beaucaire,  the  gambler.  And  one  clear  September 
night,  when  the  mists  were  rising  slowly  from 
the  fields  and  the  moon  was  radiant  overhead  and 
"  all  of  Bath  that  pretended  to  fashion "  was 
present  at  a  certain  fete  at  a  country  house  in  the 
neighborhood,  Monsieur  Beaucaire  seized  the  op 
portunity  while  escorting  the  Lady  Mary's  car 
riage  to  bring  his  suit  to  some  definite  issue,  when 


£06    NEWTON  BOOTH  TARKINGTON 

suddenly  a  party  of  horsemen  charged  down  the 
highway,  raising  the  battle-cry  of  "  Barber !  Kill 
the  barber ! "  And  being  six  to  one,  they  over 
came  Monsieur  Beaucaire,  bound  him  and  would 
have  shamefully  beaten  him  before  the  Lady 
Mary's  eyes  had  not  his  belated  servants  arrived 
in  the  nick  of  time  to  save  him.  The  attacking 
party,  however,  had  already  branded  him  as  an 
impostor, — and  as  he  stands  there,  slowly  bleeding 
from  a  hidden  wound  and  held  erect  only  by  in 
domitable  pride,  he  sees  belief  fade  out  from  the 
blue  sky  of  Lady  Mary's  eyes  and  limitless  scorn 
take  its  place.  The  climax  comes  two  weeks  later 
when  Beaucaire,  though  warned  to  quit  the  coun 
try,  reappears  in  the  pump-room  of  Bath,  his 
incognito  laid  aside,  and  is  formally  presented  to 
the  Lady  Mary  and  his  enemies  as  "  His  Highness, 
Prince  Louis-Philippe  de  Valois,  Duke  of  Orleans, 
Duke  of  Chartres,  Duke  of  Nemours,  Duke  of 
Montpensier,  First  Prince  of  the  Blood  Royal," — 
the  list  trails  on  indefinitely  while  a  by-standing 
Frenchman  murmurs  in  an  aside,  "  Old  Mirepoix 
has  the  long  breath,  but  it  take'  a  strong  man  two 
day'  to  say  all  of  the  names."  It  is  here  in  the 
final  page  that  Mr.  Tarkington  gives  the  one  last 
artistic  touch:  Monsieur  Beaucaire  forgives  the 
Lady  Mary  for  her  bitter  mistake :  "  It  is — noth 
ing — less  than  nothing.  There  is — only  jus'  one 
woman — in  the — whole  worl'  who  would  not  have 


NEWTON  BOOTH  TARKINGTON    207 

treat'  me  the  way  that  you  treat'  me.     It  is  to 
her  that  I  am  goin'  to  make  reparation." 

Cherry,  written  prior  to  either  of  the  books 
already  mentioned,  followed  next  in  order  of  pub 
lication.  It  is  not  one  of  Mr.  Tarkington's  sig 
nificant  books,  but  it  attracts  attention  because  of 
the  whimsical  nature  of  its  theme  and  its  still 
odder  setting, — for  it  is  a  story  of  a  college  stu 
dent  in  the  days  preceding  the  American  Revolu 
tion.  It  is  told  in  the  first  person  by  a  certain 
Mr.  Sudgeberry,  intolerably  priggish,  incredibly 
self-satisfied,  who  at  the  age  of  nineteen  is  fin 
ishing  his  third  year  of  study  at  Nassau  Hall. 
Mr.  Sudgeberry  is,  so  far  as  his  preoccupation 
with  himself  will  permit,  deeply  enamored  of  a 
young  woman,  a  certain  Miss  Sylvia  Gray,  who  is 
addicted  to  cherry-colored  ribbons  and  who  is 
curiously  tolerant  of  one  of  Sudgeberry's  class 
mates,  one  William  Fentriss,  whose  riotous  and  un 
godly  mode  of  life  Sudgeberry  sternly  condemns. 
The  exaggerated  pedantry,  the  unbelievable  thick 
headedness  of  Sudgeberry,  while  cleverly  sus 
tained,  become  wearisome  when  prolonged  through 
out  a  hundred  and  seventy-four  pages.  The  story 
of  a  girl  who  while  accepting  attentions  from  one 
man  amuses  herself  by  keeping  another  dangling 
upon  the  string  and  using  him  to  keep  her  father 
engaged  in  conversation  is  too  flimsy  material  from 
which  to  make  a  novel,  even  when  eked  out  by  a 


208    NEWTON  BOOTH  TARKINGTON 

lovers'  quarrel,  a  burlesque  highway  robbery  and 
rescue  and  Christmas  chimes  presaging  marriage 
bells. 

No  author  can  produce  three  volumes  of  such 
varying  degrees  of  merit  and  of  success,  without 
learning  a  good  deal  about  his  readers  and  about 
himself.  What  Mr.  Tarkington  seems  to  have 
learned  pretty  thoroughly  was  that,  whether  the 
general  public  did  or  did  not  care  for  serious  fic 
tion, — problem  novels  with  weighty  lessons  be 
hind  them, — from  him  at  least  they  asked  only 
entertainment, — and  that  entertainment  was  the 
commodity  that  he  could  most  easily  afford  them. 
Accordingly  he  wrote  The  Two  Vanrevels,  a  novel 
of  the  high-class  comedy  type,  blithe,  wholesome, 
optimistic,  peopled  with  men  of  old-fashioned 
courtliness  and  women  of  gracious  manners  and 
soft-voiced  charm.  Technically,  it  was  a  better 
piece  of  work  than  Tlie  Gentleman  from  Indiana, 
which  in  date  of  composition  immediately  pre 
ceded  it;  the  plot  structure,  although  frail  in 
substance,  showed  careful  workmanship ;  the  char 
acter  drawing  was  done  with  a  surer  touch ;  and, 
best  of  all,  Mr.  Tarkington  knew  precisely  in  what 
key  he  was  pitching  his  story,  and  he  held  to  that 
key  from  first  to  last.  There  is  nowhere  in  it  the 
least  suggestion  of  an  attempt  to  pretend  that 
it  is  anything  else  than  sheer  romanticism,  which 
here  and  there  trespasses  across  the  border-line 


NEWTON  BOOTH  TARKINGTON    209 

of  melodrama.  The  setting  is  once  more  the  In 
diana  which  Mr.  Tarkington  knows  so  well;  but 
he  secures  that  rose-tinted  mist  of  distance,  so 
essential  to  romance  of  this  type,  by  throwing 
back  the  time  of  action  a  couple  of  generations, 
to  the  days  just  preceding  the  outbreak  of  the 
Mexican  war.  As  in  all  three  of  the  earlier  stories, 
the  plot  turns  upon  a  prolonged  misunderstand 
ing;  and,  as  in  two  out  of  the  other  three,  the 
nature  of  the  misunderstanding  is  a  mistaken 
identity.  And  herein  lies  the  inherent  weakness  of 
The  Two  Vanrevels,  the  lack  of  plausibility  that 
no  amount  of  verbal  dexterity  quite  succeeds  in 
disguising.  Where  a  story  hinges  upon  the  chance 
confusion,  in  the  mind  of  a  young  girl,  of  one 
man  for  another,  in  a  town  where  every  one  knows 
every  one  else,  and  she  is  constantly  meeting  first 
one  of  the  two  men  and  then  the  other,  at  all  sorts 
of  social  functions,  talking  with  them,  dancing 
with  them,  liable  at  any  moment  to  hear  them  ad 
dressed  by  name:  under  such  circumstances  the 
difficulty  of  carrying  conviction  increases  with 
each  additional  page  of  the  story.  In  Monsieur 
Beaucaire  the  hero's  identity  is  an  easily  kept  se 
cret  because  it  is  shared  by  no  one  but  his  loyal 
servants, — and  Monsieur  Beaucaire  had  the  fur 
ther  advantage  of  being  very  short.  In  The 
Gentleman  from  Indiana  the  fact  that  the  heroine 
is  the  substitute  editor  on  the  Carlow  County  Her- 


210    NEWTON  BOOTH  TARKINGTON 

aid  is  easily  kept  from  the  hero  because  he  is  flat 
on  his  back  in  a  hospital  ward  in  another  town 
many  miles  distant, — and  there  is  the  further  ad 
vantage  that  the  secret  had  to  be  kept  throughout 
only  a  third  of  the  volume.  In  The  Two  Vanrevels 
Miss  Betty  Carewe's  blunder  in  taking  Tom  Van- 
revel  and  Crailey  Gray  each  for  the  other  is  the 
very  essence  of  the  whole  book,  its  starting-point, 
its  continued  suspense,  its  culminating  tragedy, 
its  sole  excuse  for  being.  It  would  have  served  ad 
mirably  as  the  sub-structure  of  a  short  story,  in 
which  form  Mr.  Tarkington  is  said  originally  to 
have  conceived  it;  but  as  a  full-length  novel,  in 
spite  of  a  great  deal  of  ingenuity,  one  feels  that 
the  situation  is  forced,  artificial  and  perilously 
near  a  breakdown  at  almost  any  moment.  Old 
Robert  Carewe  has  the  reputation  of  being  not 
only  the  richest  man  but  the  best  hater  in  the 
community;  and  at  the  time  that  his  daughter 
Betty  bids  farewell  to  her  convent  school  and  comes 
home,  his  long-standing  feud  with  the  Vanrevels 
has  blazed  up  with  renewed  heat.  In  his  opinion, 
openly  expressed,  the  law  firm  of  Vanrevel  and 
Gray  is  made  up  of  a  knave  and  a  fool, — and  in 
this  opinion  he  is  not  in  the  slightest  degree  shaken 
by  the  fact  that  the  public  at  large  has  never 
made  up  its  mind  which  of  the  two  it  loves  the 
more:  steady,  loyal,  wholly  dependable  Tom 
Vanrevel  or  light-hearted,  fickle,  fascinating  and 


NEWTON  BOOTH  TARKINGTON    211 

utterly  untrustworthy  Crailey  Gray.  Betty 
Carewe,  warned  by  her  father  that  if  young 
Vanrevel  ever  dares  set  foot  inside  his  grounds 
he  will  shoot  him  on  sight,  finds  a  delicious  and 
perilous  joy  in  clandestine  meetings  with  the  man 
she  thinks  her  father's  enemy  but  who  in  reality 
is  Crailey  Gray:  and  all  the  while  she  is  hearing 
disgraceful,  scandalous  tales  of  Crailey  Gray  and 
because  of  them  doing  her  best  to  make  herself 
hate  and  despise  the  man  whom  she  fell  in  love 
with  at  first  sight  and  who  of  course  is  the  real 
Vanrevel.  The  story  proceeds  with  clever  artistry 
to  its  inevitable  melodramatic  tragedy  and  would 
deserve  to  rank  rather  high  among  Mr.  Tarking- 
ton's  productions  excepting  for  the  fact  that  we 
cannot  escape  from  a  sense  of  its  being  in  a  meas 
ure  expert  jugglery,  a  tour  de  force  of  a  literary 
prestidigitateur. 

Next,  in  order  of  time,  comes  a  volume  of  short 
stories  of  such  wide  divergence  of  merit  that  one 
suspects  some  of  them  at  least  to  belong  to  a 
rather  early  period.  Nevertheless,  they  deserve 
for  certain  easily  explained  reasons  somewhat  more 
serious  attention  than  Mr.  Tarkington's  critics 
have  chosen  hitherto  to  give  them.  The  title  of 
the  volume  is  In  the  Arena  and  the  theme  of  every 
one  of  the  six  stories,  directly  or  indirectly,  is 
political.  These  stories  are  quite  serious  studies 
of  existing  conditions  in  American  politics,  as 


212    NEWTON  BOOTH  TARKINGTON 

Mr.  Tarkington  sees  them;  and  it  proves  that 
while  he  is  unable  to  do  a  sustained,  full-length 
novel  in  this  serious  vein  he  can  keep  it  up  quite 
easily  so  long  as  he  confines  himself  to  the  short- 
story  dimension.  It  is  hard  to  discriminate  in 
favor  of  any  one  story  over  the  others.  There  is 
a  great  deal  of  human  nature  in  "  The  Need  of 
Money,"  in  which  we  are  told  how  it  happened  that 
Uncle  Billy  Rollinson,  a  life-long  democrat  and 
"  a  man  as  honest  as  the  day  is  long,"  one  day  so 
voted  as  to  kill  a  party  measure  and  was  in  con 
sequence  read  out  of  his  party.  And  then  there 
is  that  delightful  bit  of  social  and  political  satire 
combined  entitled  "  Mrs.  Protheroe."  It  recounts 
the  Waterloo  of  a  certain  Alonzo  Rawson,  who 
happened  once  upon  a  time  to  be  the  senator  from 
Stackpole.  Now  Alonzo  was  a  raw-boned,  half- 
educated,  intensely  earnest  young  man  who  took 
his  duties,  especially  those  connected  with  the 
drains-and-dikes  committee,  with  such  solemnity 
that  he  nightly  prayed  on  his  knees  for  guidance. 
Of  course  a  young  man  of  Alonzo's  education  and 
environment  could  not  have  been  expected  to  fath 
om  the  wiles  and  fascinations  of  a  creature  of  in 
finite  resources  and  sagacity  such  as  Mrs. 
Protheroe,  social  butterfly  and  veteran  lobbyist, 
proved  herself  to  be.  The  odds  were  really  unfair 
and  from  the  moment  of  his  first  encounter  he 
was  lost.  The  cause  of  his  downfall  was  a  cer- 


NEWTON  BOOTH  TARKINGTON    213 

tain  Sunday  Baseball  Bill  which  he  was  pledged 
to  oppose,  which  with  untrained  but  moving  elo 
quence  he  had  already  publicly  denounced, — and 
which  Mrs.  Protheroe  succeeded  in  convincing  him 
was  a  generous  and  noble  measure  on  behalf  of 
the  down-trodden  working-man.  It  happened 
that  Mrs.  Protheroe  owned  the  local  baseball 
grounds,  the  rent  of  which  would  have  doubled  if 
they  could  have  been  used  on  Sunday, — but  this 
the  senator  from  Stackpole  did  not  know  until 
afterwards.  His  moral  back-somersault  was 
dexterously  turned,  his  final  speech  in  favor  of  the 
bill  was  an  able  effort  and  all  might  have  gone 
well  but  for  the  unfortunate  circumstance  that  a 
political  opponent  had  happened  to  see  him  at 
the  crucial  moment  when  behind  a  sheltering 
screen  of  palms  he  had  rashly  kissed  Mrs. 
Protheroe,  and  the  news  thereof  had  been  dissemi 
nated  throughout  the  senate. 

A  particular  interest,  however,  attaches  to  the 
last  story  in  the  volume  entitled  "  Great  Men's 
Sons."  The  occasion  of  the  story  was  a  certain 
performance  of  UAiglon  at  the  time  when 
Madame  Sarah  Bernhardt  and  Monsieur  Coquelin 
were  touring  the  country.  The  story,  however, 
concerns  L*Aiglon  only  indirectly.  In  the  audi 
ence  on  the  night  in  question  there  is  a  certain 
thin  old  man  with  a  grizzled  chin-beard  and  a 
high-pitched  voice;  his  name,  so  Mr.  Tarkington 


NEWTON  BOOTH  TARKINGTON 

explains,  is  Tom  Martin,  and  his  home  a  small 
country  town,  where  he  commands  the  trade  in 
Dry-Goods  and  Men's  Clothing.  It  is  after  the 
play  that  Tom  Martin  permits  himself  to  tell 
Mr.  Tarkington  what  he  thinks  of  the  perform 
ance  :  "  They  seemed  to  be  doing  it  about  as  well 
as  they  could,"  but  he  thinks  they  were  badly 
handicapped  by  the  play  itself : 

Folks  always  like  to  laugh  at  a  great  man's  son  and 
say  he  can't  amount  to  anything.  Of  course  that 
comes  partly  from  fellows  like  that  ornery  little  cuss 
we  saw  to-night,  thinkin'  they're  a  good  deal  because 
somebody  else  done  something  and  the  somebody  else 
happened  to  be  their  paw;  and  the  women  run  after 
'em,  and  they  git  low-down  like  he  was,  and  so  on. 
...  I  read  the  book  in  English  before  I  come  up, 
and  it  seemed  to  me  he  was  pretty  much  of  a  low- 
down  boy,  yet  I  wanted  to  see  how  they'd  make  him 
out,  hearin'  it  was  thought,  the  country  over,  to  be 
such  a  great  play. 

Hereupon,  the  old  man  wanders  off,  with  ap 
parent  irrelevance,  to  a  story  about  a  certain  fel 
low-townsman  of  his,  "  Orlando  T.  Bickner's  boy, 
Mel."  It  is  a  simple,  plainly-told  tale  of  silent 
self-sacrifice  and  splendid  courage,  showing  how 
a  young  fellow  with  the  right  kind  of  stuff  in 
him  fights  an  almost  hopeless  battle  educating  his 
sisters  and  younger  brother,  holding  the  family 


NEWTON  BOOTH  TARKINGTON    215 

together,  keeping  his  mother  from  want  and  win 
ning  the  love  and  respect  of  the  whole  community. 
And  then,  on  the  threshold  of  achievement,  he 
breaks  down  from  overwork  and  dies  as  uncom 
plainingly  as  he  had  lived,  without  its  ever  once 
occurring  to  him  that  he  had  done  anything  more 
than  his  simple  duty.  But  the  story  gets  its 
point, — the  kind  of  point  that  Mr.  Tarkington  in 
his  later  work  is  fond  of  making, — from  the  sug 
gested  contrast  between  the  romantic  glamor  of 
thrones  and  titles  and  the  simple  pathos  of 
actuality : 

Well,  sir,  I  read  that  "  Leglong  "  book  down  home 
so  I  thought  I  better  come  up  and  see  it  for  myself, 
how  it  was,  on  the  stage,  where  you  could  look  at  it: 
and — I  expect  they  done  it  as  well  as  they  could. 
But  when  that  little  boy,  that'd  always  had  his  board 
and  clothes  and  education  free,  saw  that  he'd  jest 
about  talked  himself  to  death,  and  called  for  the  press 
notices  about  his  christening  to  be  read  to  him  to 
soothe  his  last  spasms — why,  I  wasn't  overly  put  in 
mind  of  Melville  Bickner. 

Three  more  volumes  need  to  be  commented  upon 
briefly,  not  because  they  serve  to  throw  any  new 
light  upon  Mr.  Tarkington's  methods  but  simply 
because  they  are  exceedingly  good  of  their  kind. 
The  first  of  these  is  The  Beautiful  Lady.  Like 
Monsieur  Beaucaire,  it  is  merely  a  trifle,  but  a 


216    NEWTON  BOOTH  TARKINGTON 

very  charming  and  a  very  perfect  trifle.  The 
opening  scene  is  one  of  the  open-air  cafes  in  Paris 
at  the  corner  of  the  Place  de  1'Opera;  the  prin 
cipal  actor  is  one  Ansolini,  an  impoverished  Nea 
politan  who,  in  order  to  pay  for  the  board  and 
education  of  two  little  nieces,  has  accepted  the 
humiliating  office  of  being  an  animated  billboard, — 
his  head  is  shaven  and  adorned  in  brilliant  letters 
with  the  legend:  Theatre  Folie  Rouge,  Revue  de 
Print emps  Tons  les  Soirs!  His  contract  obliges 
him  to  sit  for  weary  hours  day  by  day  with  his 
head  bowed  above  one  of  the  small  cafe  tables 
surrounded  by  a  curious  and  jeering  throng.  Just 
once  during  all  these  days  does  he  hear  a  word 
of  sympathetic  understanding.  A  woman  clad  in 
gray,  whose  voice  proclaims  that  she  is  an  Ameri 
can  and  that  she  is  young,  pauses  before  him  and, 
far  from  seeing  anything  amusing  in  the  sight, 
exclaims  involuntarily,  "  Ah !  the  poor  man ! " 
She  has  perceived  that  he  is  a  gentleman.  This 
is  the  beginning  of  a  delicately  wrought  idyl,  the 
peculiar  and  illusive  flavor  of  which  is  due  in  no 
small  measure  to  the  skill  with  which  Mr.  Tar- 
kington  makes  the  Neapolitan  tell  the  story  in  a 
variety  of  English  which  he  flatters  himself  is  tri 
umphantly  idiomatic  but  which  at  times  is  fear 
fully  and  wonderfully  constructed. 

We  come,  next,  to   The  Conquest  of  Canaan. 
The  theme,  briefly  stated,  is  simply  the  difficulty 


NEWTON  BOOTH  TARKINGTON    217 

of  living  down  a  bad  reputation  after  it  has  once 
been  firmly  established.  Joe  Louden  found  him 
self,  at  the  age  of  nineteen,  a  much  neglected  and 
misunderstood  young  man,  owing  to  the  conditions 
of  his  home  life  after  his  father's  second  marriage 
with  a  widow  having  a  son  of  about  Joe's  age.  It 
was  not  unnatural  that,  failing  to  find  human  com 
panionship  among  the  more  staid  and  respectable 
citizens  of  Canaan,  he  should  seek  it  in  the  back 
rooms  of  saloons  and  in  a  still  less  savory  resort 
known  by  the  name  of  Beaver  Beach.  Naturally 
enough  bad  company  begot  bad  manners;  and  at 
last  a  day  came  when  a  certain  mad  adventure  won 
for  him  the  enmity  of  Martin  Pike,  the  smug, 
sanctimonious  and  utterly  unscrupulous  old  mil 
lionaire  who  dominated  Canaan  with  an  iron  hand. 
There  was  nothing  left  for  Joe  Louden  to  do  but  to 
leave  Canaan,  and  for  long  years  his  whereabouts 
and  his  methods  of  life  are  an  unknown  quantity 
to  his  native  town.  In  those  earlier  days  Joe  num 
bered  among  his  acquaintances  only  one  real  friend 
of  the  better  class.  She  was  the  grand-daughter  of 
an  impoverished  painter,  and  her  name  was  Ariel 
Tabor ;  she  was  shabby  in  dress  and  painfully  con 
scious  of  it ;  and  she  had  the  shyness  and  the  awk 
wardness  of  movement  which  in  girlhood  not  in 
frequently  are  the  forerunner  of  later  grace  and 
charm.  But  in  those  early  days  at  least  she  was 
as  far  from  winning  the  approval  of  Canaan's 


218    NEWTON  BOOTH  TARKINGTON 

autocrats  as  Joe  himself,  and  their  common  griev 
ance  helped  to  cement  their  friendship.  Seven 
years  elapse  between  the  time  of  Joe's  disappear 
ance  and  his  return  as  a  man  sobered  by  hard 
experience,  strong  from  his  single-handed  fight 
with  the  world,  and  ready  now  to  settle  down  in 
his  old  home  as  a  practising  lawyer.  To  his 
amazement,  he  finds  that  the  old  prejudice  against 
him  is  still  smoldering,  the  bad  name  once  attached 
to  him  has  not  been  forgotten,  the  young  men  and 
women  who  knew  him  as  boy  imitate  the  example 
of  priest  and  Levite  and  pass  him  by  on  the  other 
side;  the  clerk  at  the  National  House  curtly  in 
forms  him  that  the  rooms  are  all  occupied;  and 
the  greetings  of  his  father  and  relatives  are  even 
less  cordial,  his  stepbrother  sarcasticalty  inquir 
ing  whether  he  has  saved  up  enough  money  on 
which  to  starve.  In  short,  all  respectable  Canaan 
conspires  to  drive  him  back  to  his  old  haunts  and 
old  companions;  and  he  finds  that  if  he  is  to  stay 
in  Canaan  and  fight  for  his  rights  he  can  do  so 
only  by  seeking  shelter  at  Beaver  Beach  and  ac 
cepting  the  human  scum  and  refuse  of  the  place 
as  his  first  clients. 

Such  is  the  beginning  of  a  prolonged,  tenacious, 
doggedly  contested  struggle  which  is  destined  to 
end  in  Joe  Louden's  complete  and  triumphant  con 
quest  of  Canaan.  From  passive  scorn  the  town  soon 
awakes  to  active  hostility,  with  Martin  Pike,  his 


NEWTON  BOOTH  TARKINGTON    219 

millions  and  his  newspaper  representing  the  in 
trenched  forces  of  Canaan's  respectability.  From 
this  point  on  the  story  becomes  frank  melodrama, 
of  that  glorified  sort  which  could  not  be  appreci 
ated  on  Third  Avenue.  The  shy,  gauche  Ariel 
Tabor  returns  from  Europe  transformed  into  a 
vision  of  feminine  grace  and  charm,  wreaks 
havoc  with  the  male  population  of  Canaan  and 
gives  to  Joe  the  one  needful  incentive  to  keep  him 
from  weakening  at  the  crucial  moment  of  his  fight. 
Joe  promptly  wins  a  series  of  great  victories.  He 
triumphs  in  a  prolonged  legal  fight,  although  all 
public  opinion  is  against  him;  he  exposes  the  ras 
cality  of  Martin  Pike,  who  has  nearly  defrauded 
Ariel  of  a  fortune ;  and  the  curtain  is  finally  rung 
down  upon  him,  as  the  curtain  always  should  be 
rung  down  upon  the  hero  of  melodrama,  in  the 
hour  of  his  exaltation  as  mayor-elect  of  Canaan 
and  the  accepted  suitor  of  the  woman  he  loves. 

And  lastly  we  have  The  Guest  of  Quesney,  which 
some  of  Mr.  Tarkington's  more  enthusiastic  ad 
mirers  have  pronounced  the  best  piece  of  fiction 
that  he  has  yet  produced.  It  is  somewhat  difficult 
for  an  impartial  reader  to  find  any  adequate  rea 
son  for  thus  discriminating  against  his  earlier  vol 
umes.  The  Guest  of  Quesney  is  a  readable  story, 
with  a  picturesque  setting  and  an  atmosphere  of 
considerable  charm ;  it  has  an  underlying  mystery, 
so  transparent  that  it  ought  to  cease  to  mystify 


220    NEWTON  BOOTH  TARKINGTON 

any  person  of  average  intelligence  at  least  as  early 
in  its  progress  as  the  fifth  or  sixth  chapter;  and 
it  does  contain  one  or  two  ideas  of  serious  import. 
Yet,  take  it  all  in  all,  it  is  simply  a  new  variation 
of  the  old  Tarkington  formula,  a  prolonged  social 
tangle  based  upon  mistaken  identity, — with  only 
this  difference:  that  the  person  whose  identity  is 
in  question  is  as  much  a  puzzle  to  himself  as  to 
anyone  else.  Several  years  before  the  opening  of 
the  story,  its  heroine  tried  that  familiar  and  dan 
gerous  experiment  of  marrying  a  dissolute  wreck 
of  a  man  with  the  intention  of  reforming  him. 
The  experiment  resulted  in  the  customary  failure: 
the  husband  was  before  long  making  himself  no 
torious  on  the  Paris  Boulevards  in  company  with  a 
Spanish  dancer,  and  the  outraged  wife  was  seek 
ing  a  divorce  when  a  grim  automobile  accident 
very  nearly  crushed  life  out  of  him  and  completely 
crushed  out  all  knowledge  of  himself,  all  memory 
of  the  past.  The  automobile  accident,  by  the  way, 
is  a  fine  bit  of  pictorial  sketching.  Mr.  Tarking 
ton  certainly  has  a  rare  gift,  when  he  wants  to 
use  it,  for  freehand  drawing  of  scenes  of  carnage. 
All  of  these  details  belong  structurally  to  the  pro 
logue;  the  real  story  begins  a  couple  of  years 
later  when  a  strikingly  handsome  young  man  with 
prematurely  gray  hair, — a  young  man  who  looks, 
so  friends  of  the  automobile  victim  say,  as  though 
he  might  have  been  the  latter's  younger  brother  or 


NEWTON  BOOTH  TARKINGTON    221 

his  own  better  self  at  an  earlier  age, — makes  his 
appearance  in  a  little  French  village  within  easy 
walking  distance  of  a  chateau  temporarily  occu 
pied  by  a  beautiful  stranger  who  is  understood  to 
be  an  American  woman.  The  story  is  told  in  the 
first  person  by  an  American  artist  to  whom  at  the 
outset  none  of  the  principal  characters  is  person 
ally  known ;  and  being  himself  much  mystified,  he 
succeeds  in  surrounding  his  people  and  his  events 
with  a  certain  amount  of  verbal  fog.  Neverthe 
less,  it  takes  no  great  ingenuity  to  conjecture  that 
the  young  man  with  the  prematurely  gray  hair 
who  looks  out  upon  life  with  the  wondering  gaze 
of  a  child  is  the  former  dissolute  husband  whose 
accident  has  blotted  out  all  memory  of  evil;  and 
that  the  beautiful  stranger  at  the  chateau  is  the 
wife  who,  in  spite  of  neglect  and  humiliation,  has 
never  ceased  to  care  for  him,  and  who  now  is  trem 
ulously  fearful  lest  his  loss  of  memory  of  other 
things  involves  also  the  memory  of  her.  Persons 
whose  past  has  been  blotted  out  by  some  injury 
to  the  brain  have  been  the  theme  of  more  novels 
than  it  would  now  be  worth  while  to  count.  Mr. 
Tarkington  in  a  measure  justifies  the  use  of  an 
old  idea  by  injecting  into  it  this  new  suggestion: 
that  we  are  all  of  us  hampered  by  our  memory  of 
the  past,  handicapped  by  our  knowledge  of  the 
evil  in  the  world  at  large  and  more  specifically 
in  ourselves;  and  that  if  upon  reaching  maturity 


222    NEWTON  BOOTH  TARKINGTON 

some  accident  should  blot  all  this  out,  leaving  our 
minds  as  blank  as  in  early  childhood,  and  give  us 
a  chance  to  start  over  again,  to  ignore  evil  and 
learn  only  what  is  good,  we  might  make  of  our 
selves  far  nobler  men  and  women  than  we  were 
before.  Mr.  Tarkington  contents  himself  with 
making  this  suggestion ;  he  proves  nothing,  nor 
does  he  try  to.  His  story  ends  on  the  threshold 
of  the  new  life;  and  whether  his  hero  is  a  per 
manently  reformed  character,  or  whether  he  slowly 
but  inevitably  drifts  back  into  his  old  evil  ways, 
remains  tantalizingly  an  open  question.  But  this 
does  not  alter  the  fact  that  the  author  has  written 
a  very  agreeable  Summer  idyl  pervaded  by  the 
soft  sunshine,  the  fragrance  of  flowers  and  the 
singing  of  birds, — an  atmosphere  which  altogether 
brings  a  thrill  of  nostalgia  for  the  highways  and 
byways  of  rural  France. 

These  eight  volumes  pretty  well  sum  up  not  only 
what  Mr.  Tarkington  has  done  in  prose  fiction  but 
what  he  is  likely  to  achieve  in  the  future.  In 
spite  of  much  diversity  in  time  and  setting,  his 
talent  is  not  an  instrument  of  many  notes;  his 
themes,  as  already  suggested,  are  few  and  oft 
repeated.  (The  basis  of  every  story  he  has  writ 
ten  is  a  misunderstanding  of  one  kind  or  another, 
of  identity,  of  purpose,  of  character.  He  sees 
life,  even  the  prosaic,  every-day  life  of  his  home 
environment,  through  rose-tinted  lenses  that  both 


NEWTON  BOOTH  TARKINGTON 

soften  and  magnify.  He  has  an  imperishable 
faith  in  the  innate  goodness  of  the  human  heart 
which,  coupled  with  a  wholesome  scorn  of  sham 
and  snobbery,  gives  to  the  people  of  his  fantasy 
a  certain  whole-souled  quality  that  makes  them 
lovable  even  while  we  feel  that  they  are  a  little 
bit  too  good  to  be  true.  All  of  these  qualities  of 
fer  in  themselves  as  much  promise  of  success  in 
drama  under  existing  conditions  as  in  prose  fic- 
tiojn  indeed  one  has  only  to  glance  at  a  play  like 
The  Man  from  Home, — in  which  his  share  in  the 
collaboration  with  Mr.  V^ilson  can  be  shrewdly 
guessed  between  the  lines, — to  see  how  every  one 
of  his  favorite  tricks  in  his  novels  is  there  repro 
duced  with  even  more  felicitous  effect.  There 
again,  in  that  play,  we  have  a  situation  depending 
on  a  whole  series  of  misunderstandings  and  mis 
taken  identities :  a  Russian  prince  masquerading  as 
a  simple  German  traveler,  an  escaped  anarchist 
disguised  as  a  chauffeur,  a  whole  group  of  adven 
turers  and  tricksters,  male  and  female,  passing 
themselves  off  as  shining  lights  of  European  aris 
tocracy  and  the  Man  from  Home  himself  volunta 
rily  posing  as  a  very  simple  homespun  personality, 
but  in  reality  the  brightest,  keenest,  most  indomi 
table  personality  in  the  whole  group.  And  here, 
more  than  anywhere  in  his  novels,  Mr.  Tarkington 
allows  himself  to  fall  back  upon  that  favorite 
makeshift  of  the  romanticist,  Coincidence.  Every- 


NEWTON  BOOTH  TARKINGTON 

thing  happens  in  the  nick  of  time.  A  person's 
name  is  mentioned,  and  miraculously  he  appears 
upon  the  scene;  a  secret  is  whispered,  and  some 
where  a  window  or  door  opens  stealthily  and  the 
secret  is  overheard.  A  tangle  of  situations  is 
tightly  knotted  up  and  the  only  people  who 
can  unravel  it  are  supposedly  scattered  widely 
throughout  Europe  and  Asia, — and  presto,  they 
are  all  discovered  simultaneously  beneath  the  roof 
of  a  Sicilian  hotel.  Here,  indeed,  we  have  the  very 
essence  of  Booth  Tarkington ;  from  first  to  last, 
under  various  disguises,  he  has  always  been,  as 
he  is  to-day,  a  successful  exponent  of  glorified 
melodrama. 


"O.  HENRY" 


«0.  HENRY' 

IT  is  a  sufficiently  common  figure  of  speech  to 
characterize  the  careers  of  certain  men  as  mete 
oric, — but  usually  with  no  conception  of  the 
length  of  time  that  it  may  have  taken  the  meteor 
to  gain  the  requisite  velocity  and  momentum  to 
produce  its  brief,  fiery  burst,  and  no  thought  of 
the  stray  fragments  that  remain  after  the  burst 
is  over  to  awaken  the  curious  appreciation  of  the 
enlightened  few.  If  we  accept  this  broader  view, 
then  "  O.  Henry  "  was  quite  literally  a  literary 
meteor.  Although  he  had  served  an  apprentice 
ship  of  a  score  of  years,  he  remained,  up  to  within 
half  a  decade  of  his  death,  practically  unknown  to 
the  general  reading  public ;  and  by  them,  in  half  a 
decade  more,  he  will  already  have  begun  to  be 
forgotten.  Yet  for  just  a  few  intervening  years 
he  achieved  a  popularity  unparalleled  in  its  swift 
development  and  its  extent  by  any  modern  Ameri 
can  writer  of  short  stories.  And  not  least  sur 
prising  was  the  variety  of  taste  to  which  he  ap 
pealed,  the  range  in  education,  culture  and  social 
grade  of  his  reading  public.  Considered  as  an 
article  of  merchandise,  his  stories  have  commanded 
a  market  rate  rivaled  only  by  Mr.  Kipling;  con- 
235 


226  "O.  HENRY' 

sidered  as  literature,  they  have  formed  the  theme 
of  more  than  one  grave  and  reverend  professor  of 
English  Letters.  The  meteor  has  blazed,  and 
burst,  and  burned  itself  out;  and  the  interesting 
question  not  unnaturally  arises,  To  what  extent 
was  "  O.  Henry's  "  vogue  justified?  Is  the  popular 
verdict  greatly  in  error?  Does  his  fame  of  the 
passing  hour  rest  upon  a  solid  foundation? 

One  takes  up  the  answer  with  a  certain  amount 
of  diffidence.  As  was  said  in  another  critical  arti 
cle  in  one  of  the  magazines  quite  recently,  but 
while  the  author  of  Cabbages  and  Kings  was  still 
with  us,  such  matters  "  rest  upon  the  knees  of 
the  Gods."  It  is  always  easier  to  dogmatize  as 
to  what  posterity  ought  to  do  than  to  predict 
what  that  profoundly  unknown  quantity  really 
will  do.  Nevertheless,  certain  opinions  may  be  ven 
tured  with  some  assurance,  provided  we  base  them, 
first,  upon  a  few  established  facts  regarding  the 
personal  "  O.  Henry," — his  life,  his  temperament, 
his  attitude  towards  his  craft, — and  secondly, 
upon  the  really  salient  points  of  his  own  pro 
ductions. 

In  the  first  place,  then,  at  the  risk  of  tediously 
repeating  what  has  recently  become  a  common 
place  of  the  daily  press,  let  us  summarize  the  main 
facts  in  the  life  of  this  particular  American  story 
teller.  That  his  real  name  was  Sidney  Porter  and 
that  he  happened  to  be  born  in  Greensborough, 


"O.  HENRY '  227 

North  Carolina,  in  the  year  1867,  is  not  material; 
but  it  helps  to  complete  the  record.  The  fact  that 
his  health,  as  a  boy,  was  rather  poor  and  that  con 
sequently  he  was  sent  to  a  Texan  ranch  at  a  time 
when  otherwise  he  would  have  gone  to  college,  has 
a  more  direct  bearing  upon  our  problem.  He  was 
not  of  the  stuff  from  which  ranchmen  and  cow 
boys  are  made;  and,  although  with  characteristic 
facility  he  picked  up  his  surprising  amount  of 
the  picturesque  idiom  of  the  ranch,  a  scant  three 
years  had  satiated  him  with  the  life.  All  this 
time,  somewhere  in  the  back  of  his  mind  had 
lurked  persistently  the  ambition  to  write.  Per 
haps  one  of  the  most  curious  facts  in  the  world 
of  letters  is  the  unlikely  sources  from  which  the 
public  favorites  among  writers  spring.  When  one 
sees  the  apparent  hopelessness  of  conditions  that 
have  given  birth  to  some  of  the  successful  fiction 
makers  of  to-day,  even  the  most  self-confident 
critic  hesitates  to  say  to  an  apparently  hopeless 
novice :  Give  it  up !  there  is  no  chance  for  you. 

The  life  of  the  ranch  had  re-established  Mr. 
Porter's  health.  Following  the  insistent  call  of 
Letters,  he  went  to  Houston  and  secured  a  posi 
tion  on  a  daily  paper,  The  Post.  It  is  curious  how 
biographers  insist  upon  mixing  up  essentials  and 
non-essentials.  Much  has  been  made  of  the  fact 
that  the  Houston  Post  paid  Mr.  Porter  fifteen 
dollars  a  week  and  that  the  editor  assured  him 


228  "O.  HENRY' 

that  within  five  years  he  would  be  earning  a  hun 
dred  a  week  on  a  New  York  newspaper.  So  far 
as  this  means  anything,  it  means  that  Mr.  Porter 
must  have  been  more  successful  as  a  reporter  than 
the  editor  was  as  a  prophet.  Many  more  than 
five  years  passed  before  he  reached  New  York. 
The  essential  facts,  so  far,  are  that  he  had  an 
inborn  desire  to  write,  a  frail  constitution  which 
debarred  him  from  a  college  education  and  the 
good  luck  to  strike  almost  simultaneously  a  health 
ful  climate  and  a  newspaper  opening.  The  fol 
lowing  items  have  their  importance:  after  a  year 
on  the  Post,  he  went  to  Austin  and  purchased  for 
the  sum  of  two  hundred  and  fifty  dollars  a  news 
paper  named  The  Iconoclast  from  its  owner,  a 
certain  Brann.  The  latter,  having  withdrawn  to 
Waco,  and  perhaps  regretting  his  bargain,  asked 
Mr.  Porter  to  give  him  back  the  paper's  name. 
Our  author,  with  characteristic  generosity,  con 
sented  and  rechristened  his  own  paper  The  Roll 
ing  Stone.  Whatever  symbolism  there  may  be  in 
names,  this  particular  paper  promptly  rolled  it 
self  out  of  existence,  and  the  future  "  O.  Henry  " 
went  into  voluntary  exile  in  Central  America.  The 
fact  that  he  went  there  with  a  friend  who  "  in 
tended  to  go  into  the  fruit  business,  but  didn't," 
is  evidence  of  a  credulity  characteristic  of  him, 
not  only  then  but  later, — as  subsequent  anecdotes 
show. 


"O.  HENRY  "  229 

What  he  did  and  what  he  saw  in  Central  Amer 
ica,  one  gleans  between  the  lines  of  Cabbages  and 
Kings;  but  the  one  authentic  bit  of  autobiog 
raphy  of  that  period  is  the  single  laconic  sen 
tence  :  "  Most  of  the  time  I  knocked  around  with 
the  refugees  and  consuls."  Mr.  Porter's  subsequent 
movements  are  given  still  more  briefly  in  the  few 
meager  printed  accounts.  He  returned  to  Texas, 
thence  removed  to  New  Orleans,  "  where  he  began 
more  consistently  to  work  as  a  writer  " ;  and  in 
1902  came  to  New  York,  having  received  from 
Aindee's  Magazine  the  offer  of  one  hundred  dol 
lars  apiece  for  a*  dozen  stories.  From  that  time, 
until  his  death,  Mr.  Porter  made  New  York  his 
home,  exhibiting  that  extreme,  almost  exaggerated 
affection  for  the  metropolis  that  is  peculiar  to  the 
Manhattanite  by  adoption. 

Now,  the  years  about  which  we  know  the  least 
are  probably  the  important  ones,  the  years  of 
growth  and  slow  accretion.  The  record,  as  it 
stands,  fails  to  explain.  It  shows  a  man  of  nat 
urally  roving  spirit,  whose  schoolbook  has  been 
experience,  hard  and  practical,  and  who  toiled  for 
twenty  years  before  beginning  to  reap  his  reward. 
It  is  easy  enough  to  write  sagely  that  "  his  wan 
derings  have  influenced  his  work  " ;  that  "  Texas 
gives  the  setting  of  short  stories  called  The 
Heart  o1  the  West  ";  that  "  Central  America  is 
the  scene  of  Cabbages  and  Kings"  and  that  New 


230  "O.  HENRY  " 

i  York  gives  the  background  for  The  Four  Million, 
I  The  Voice  of  the  City  and  TJie  Trimmed  Lamp. 
I  This  all  sounds  as  though  it  meant  something ;  but 
,•  in  reality  it  does  not.  There  are  probably  many 
thousands  of  people  whose  lot  in  life  has  taken 
them  successively  to  Texas,  to  Central  America 
and  to  New  York, — yet  there  is  only  one  "  O. 
Henry."  What  would  really  be  worth  knowing  is 
what  he  was  thinking  about,  through  all  those 
formative  years ;  what  books  he  read,  and  which 
especially  impressed  him ;  what  sort  of  work,  in 
kind  and  quality,  he  did  on  the  various  newspapers 
with  which  he  connected  himself;  and  above  all, 
where  he  learned  his  technique  of  the  short  story, 
and  what  models,  if  any,  he  consciously  imitated. 
Of  all  this  we  have  only  a  few  meager  and  tan 
talizing  glimpses,  like  the  following  paragraph, 
published  in  a  comparatively  recent  interview: 

I  did  more  reading  between  my  thirteenth  and  nine 
teenth  years  than  I  have  done  in  all  the  years  that 
have  passed  since  then.  And  my  taste  at  that  time 
was  much  better  than  it  is  to-day ;  for  I  used  to  read 
nothing  but  the  classics.  Burton's  Anatomy  of  Mel 
ancholy  and  Lane's  translation  of  the  Arabian  Nights 
were  my  favorites. 

The  Anatomy  of  Melancholy  and  the  Arabian 
Nights  are  indisputably  classics;  but  there  is  noth- 


"O.  HENRY' 

ing  in  either  that  could  have  given  a  hint  of  that 
nice  economy  of  means,  that  unerring  instinct  for 
ending  a  story  at  just  the  right  instant,  and  with 
just  the  right  phrase,  that  makes  so  many  of  "  O. 
Henry's  "  stories  models  of  technical  skill.  Be 
cause  of  this  constructive  gift,  he  has  not  infre 
quently  been  hailed  as  the  "  Yankee  Maupassant  " ; 
and  yet  those  who  knew  him  best  give  assurance  that 
"  O.  Henry "  either  never  made  the  acquaint 
ance  of  the  author  of  La  Parure,  or  else  read  him 
only  after  the  great  bulk  of  his  own  writings  was 
completed.  And  it  is  equally  doubtful  whether  he 
became  acquainted  with  French  technique  through 
what  is  probably  the  next  best  medium, — the  short 
stories  of  H.  C.  Bunner.  Apparently  the  "  O. 
Henry  "  story  is  to  a  large  extent  an  independent 
development,  born  of  an  instinct  for  getting  the 
sharpest  possible  narrative  effects. 

Now,  it  is  idle  to  deny  many  of  "  O.  Henry's  " 
very  genuine  merits.  He  was  technically  a  master 
of  his  craft,  even  though  to  the  practised  eye  cer 
tain  tricks  of  his  trade  stick  out  somewhat  con 
spicuously.  He  had  mingled  on  terms  of  frank 
comradeship  with  all  sorts  and  conditions  of  men, 
the  tramp,  the  clerk,  the  \vard  politician,  the  city 
policeman,  the  shop  and  factory  girl,  the  human 
derelict  at  home  and  abroad ;  and  he  has  a  faculty 
compared  by  more  than  one  critic  to  that  of 
Dickens,  for  catching  both  the  humor  and  the 


232  "O.  HENRY' 

pathos  of  these  alien  lives.  Mr.  Francis  Hack- 
ett,  writing  recently  in  the  Chicago  Evening  Post, 
made  the  following  comment: 

To  O.  Henry,  the  clerk  is  neither  abnormal  or  sub 
normal;  he  is  simply  $15-a-week  humanity.  He  has 
specialized  in  this  humanity  with  loving  care,  with  a 
Kiplingesque  attention  to  detail.  But  his  is  far  from 
the  humorless  method  of  Gissing  and  Merrick,  who 
were  no  more  happy  in  a  boarding-house  than 
Thoreau  would  have  been  happy  in  the  Waldorf- 
Astoria. 

One  is  tempted  to  ask  parenthetically  why,  in 
the  name  of  all  that  makes  good  art,  an  author 
should  be  required  to  be  happy  in  a  boarding- 
house,  or  a  corner  grocery,  or  an  east-side  tene 
ment,  in  order  to  write  of  them  truly  and  with 
understanding.  The  important  fact  is  not 
whether  "  O.  Henry  "  was  happy  in  the  company 
of  clerks,  but  whether  he  understood  them, — and 
of  this  his  stories  leave  not  the  shadow  of  a  doubt. 
It  is  true,  however,  that  "  0.  Henry's  "  likes  and 
dislikes  do  occasionally  intrude  themselves  between 
the  story  and  the  reader, — and  to  the  lover  of  a 
finished  art,  this  is  not  a  merit,  but  quite  dis 
tinctly  a  fly  in  the  ointment  of  our  enjoy 
ment. 

Another  quality  for  which  "  O.  Henry  "  has 
been  overpraised  by  nearly  every  writer  who  has 


"  0.  HENRY ' 

attempted  a  critical  analysis  of  his  work,  is  the 
excellence  of  his  local  descriptions,  the  accuracy 
with  which  he  makes  you  feel  that  a  certain  story 
not  only  happened  in  New  York,  but  that  it  was 
part  and  parcel  of  the  city  itself,  and  of  no  other 
place  in  the  world.  It  is  extremely  enlightening, 
as  regards  "  0.  Henry's  "  attitude  towards  fiction 
in  general  and  towards  his  own  work  in  particular, 
to  read  the  following  frank  confession: 

People  say  I  know  New  York  well!  But  change 
Twenty-third  Street  in  one  of  my  New  York  stories 
to  Main  Street,  rub  out  the  Flatiron  Building  and  put 
in  the  Town  Hall.  Then  the  story  will  fit  just  as 
truly  elsewhere.  At  least  I  hope  this  is  the  case  with 
what  I  write.  So  long  as  your  story  is  true  to  life, 
the  mere  change  of  local  color  will  set  it  in  the 
East,  West,  South  or  North.  The  characters  in  the 
Arabian  Nights  parade  up  and  down  Broadway  at 
midday  or  Main  Street  in  Dallas,  Texas. 

When  I  recently  ran  across  this  paragraph  for 
the  first  time,  it  gave  me  a  rather  keen  delight; 
because,  personally,  I  never  could  see  the  excel 
lence  of  "  0.  Henry's  "  local  color;  I  never  could 
feel  that  a  few  names  of  streets  and  buildings, 
printed  with  capital  letters,  sufficed  to  give  the  illu 
sion  of  that  indefinable  atmosphere  which  a  person 
born  and  bred  in  a  certain  city  absorbs  from  a 
thousand  subtle  little  sights  and  sounds  and  smells, 


234  "O.  HENRY' 

such  as  that  city  and  none  other  has  to  offer. 
It  is  a  comfort  to  discover,  not  merely  that  the 
fault  was  not  a  lack  of  perception  on  my  part, 
but  a  deliberate  choice  upon  the  part  of  "  O. 
Henry," — in  short,  that  he  not  only  neglected  an 
essential  article  in  Maupassant's  declaration  of 
faith  as  an  artist,  but  that  he  openly  avowed  his 
disbelief  in  it.  It  would  be  interesting  to  know  what 
he  would  have  thought  of  Flaubert's  insistence 
upon  the  supreme  necessity,  if  you  are  describ 
ing  only  a  tree,  a  horse  or  a  dog,  of  catching  its 
special  physiognomy  so  unerringly  that  it  could 
not  be  confused  with  any  other  tree,  horse  or  dog 
in  the  whole  world. 

Yet  it  is  easy  to  understand  "  O.  Henry's " 
vogue;  he  appealed  to  a  wide  range  of  men  and 
women,  because  he  wrote  of  a  wide  range  with  sym 
pathy  and  understanding.  He  appealed  to  the  wide 
class  that  is  repelled  by  anything  like  academic 
nicety  of  speech,  by  the  raciness  of  his  phrase  and 
vocabulary,  his  habit  of  making  the  English  lan 
guage  a  servant  rather  than  a  master.  Much 
of  his  humor  lies  in  his  verbal  audacities, — and 
for  that  very  reason  he  is  doomed  within  a  decade 
to  seem  in  a  measure  already  out  of  date.  And 
his  habit  of  invoking  local  and  temporal  allusions, 
not  merely  as  subordinate  details,  but  at  times  as 
the  turning-point  of  a  story,  is  another  factor 
that  will  hasten  the  wane  of  his  popularity.  Take, 


"0.  HENRY  "  235 

for  example,  one  of  the  best  stories  that  he  ever 
wrote,  "  The  Rose  of  Dixie."  It  is  a  story  of  an 
old  Southern  colonel,  who  has  undertaken  to  edit 
a  magazine  exclusively  in  the  interests  of  the 
"  fair  daughters  and  brave  sons  "  of  Dixieland. 
Handicapped  by  the  Colonel's  strong  sectional 
prejudices,  the  magazine  is  not  a  financial  suc 
cess;  so  the  stockholders  suggest  that  the  aid  of 
a  certain  Thacker,  famed  for  his  successes  in  forc 
ing  up  the  circulation  of  lagging  periodicals, 
shall  be  invoked.  The  Colonel  rejects  Thacker's 
much  too  radical  suggestions,  but  at  the  same 
time  hints  mysteriously  at  an  important  article 
that  he  has  on  hand,  an  article  brimful  of  wise 
philosophy  of'  life, — but  unfortunately  written  by 
one  regarding  whose  qualifications  he  has  not  yet 
sufficiently  informed  himself.  The  tale,  in  order 
to  be  appreciated,  has  to  be  read.  No  amount 
of  skill  in  epitomizing  can  begin  to  convey  the 
humor  of  the  denouement,  when  the  article  at  last 
appears  with  the  title  emblazoned  with  local  sig 
nificance,  in  prominent  full-faced  type,  and  the 
name  of  the  author  so  minute  as  to  be  almost 
illegible,  below  it, — and  that,  too,  the  name  of  one 
who,  at  the  time  the  "  Rose  of  Dixie  "  was  writ 
ten,  happened  to  be  Chief  Executive  of  the  nation ! 
A  generation  hence,  the  edge  of  the  joke  will 
be  quite  gone;  indeed,  it  is  already  somewhat 
dulled. 


236  "  0.  HENRY  * 

One  disadvantage  under  which  a  writer  of  short 
stories  labors  is  that  it  is  out  of  the  question  to 
analyze  at  any  length  even  a  tithe  of  his  writings. 
Thus,  in  the  case  of  "  O.  Henry,"  one  would  be 
glad  to  dwell  at  some  length  upon  each  separate 
volume,  to  analyze  the  clever  mechanism  of  Cab 
bages  and  Kings,  whereby  the  reader  is  carried 
through  a  lengthy  string  of  apparently  slightly 
correlated  tales,  and  does  not  suspect,  until  the 
final  page  is  turned,  that  underlying  them  all  is  a 
mystery,  a  series  of  cross-purposes,  straightened 
out  only  when  two  bits  of  human  flotsam  finally 
meet  and  exchange  confidences  on  a  North  River 
pier  in  New  York.  But  to  stop  long  over  any  one 
volume,  or  even  over  any  considerable  number  of 
stories,  would  serve  no  special  purpose.  The  more 
you  read  them,  the  more  you  realize  that  there 
is  a  certain  sameness  about  his  themes  and  his 
structure,  that  he  has  just  a  few  formula  that  he 
invokes  over  and  over  again.  There  is,  for  in 
stance,  the  formula  of  cross-purposes,  like  the 
story,  if  memory  is  not  at  fault  in  details,  of  the 
man  who  pawned  his  watch*  to  buy  his  wife  for 
Christmas  a  fur  neck-piece  to  match  her  muff, — 
unaware  that  she  in  turn  had  sacrificed  her  muff, 
in  order  to  buy  him  a  watch-fob.  Or  again,  there 
is  the  irony-of-fate  formula,  as  exemplified  in  the 
story  of  "  Soapy  and  the  Anthem,"  in  which  a 
tramp,  having  made  up  his  mind  that  a  few 


"O.  HENRY'  237 

months  on  the  island  will  be  the  pleasantest  ar 
rangement  that  he  can  make  for  winter,  proceeds 
to  attempt  to  get  himself  arrested,  by  swindling 
a  restaurant  keeper  out  of  a  meal,  by  breaking  a 
window,  by  insulting  a  woman, — and  all  to  no 
purpose;  fate,  under  one  guise  or  another,  inter 
venes  to  defeat  his  plans.  And  then,  at  last,  as 
he  is  passing  a  church  door,  and  hears  the  swell 
ing  notes  of  a  fine  old  anthem,  some  softening 
memory  of  childhood  steals  over  him,  and  he  finds 
himself,  unkempt  and  ragged  as  he  is,  drawn  irre 
sistibly  into  the  church,  with  a  growing  resolution 
to  turn  over  a  new  leaf, — a  policeman,  deciding 
that  he  is  lurking  there  for  no  good  purpose,  runs 
him  in,  and  Soapy,  now  that  he  no  longer  wishes 
it,  finds  himself  on  his  way  to  the  Island. 

And  then  again,  there  is  what  we  may  call  the 
"  inertia  of  human  nature  "  formula, — the  type  of 
story  based  upon  a  subtle  appreciation  of  the  fact 
that  people  often  think  that  they  have  learned 
a  lesson,  but,  as  soon  as  the  stress  is  over,  drop 
back  again  into  their  old  rut.  One  of  the  best 
of  this  class  is  a  story  in  the  volume  called  The 
Trimmed  Lamp.  It  is  not  necessarily  the  best  of 
the  collection,  but  somehow  it  made  a  rather  spe 
cial  appeal  to  the  present  writer,  and  seems  worth 
giving  in  some  detail. 

It  is  merely  the  story  of  a  commonplace  man 
married  to  a  commonplace  little  wife  and  living 


238  "  O.  HENRY  ' 

in  a  commonplace  little  apartment  on  a  salary  the 
smallness  of  which  also  seems  to  have  the  element 
of  commonplaceness.  A  story,  you  will  perceive, 
in  which  the  temperamental  barometer  on  the  whole 
stands  rather  low.  After  the  glamor  of  the  hon 
eymoon  wore  off,  the  man  fell  gradually  into  the 
habit  of  spending  his  evenings  away  from  the  home 
atmosphere.  As  surely  as  the  hands  of  the  clock 
came  around  to  half-past  eight  he  would  reach 
for  his  hat.  "  Now,  where  are  you  going,  I  should 
like  to  know  ?  "  the  wife's  querulous  voice  would 
question,  and  his  stereotyped  answer  would  be 
flung  back  through  the  closing  door,  "  Just  going 
down  to  play  pool  with  the  boys  for  half  an  hour." 
But  one  night  when  he  comes  home  there  is  no 
wife  to  meet  him,  no  dinner  waiting,  nothing  but 
a  pervading  disorder  and  a  hasty  note  telling  him 
that  she  has  been  called  away  by  the  sudden  news 
of  her  mother's  serious  illness.  Disconsolately  he 
makes  a  comfortless  meal  from  cold  remnants 
found  in  the  ice-box,  the  loneliness  of  the  apart 
ment  each  instant  forcing  itself  into  his  conscious 
ness.  It  is  the  first  night  since  their  marriage  that 
she  has  been  away  from  him,  the  first  time  that 
he  has  asked  himself  what  life  would  be  without 
her.  He  begins  to  regret  the  hours  of  her  society 
he  has  voluntarily  lost,  the  evenings  he  has  gone 
out  and  left  her  to  bear  the  same  solitude  from 
3vhich  he  is  now  suffering.  Never  again,  he  tells 


"O.  HENRY"  239 

himself,  never  again !  He  will  make  it  up  to  the 
little  woman  when  she  comes  back,  he  will  take  her 
out  more,  to  theaters  and  all  that  sort  of  thing; 
she  shall  never  again  be  left  to  the  ghastly  lone 
liness  of  these  silent  rooms.  And,  in  the  midst 
of  his  good  resolutions,  the  door  opens  and  the 
wife  walks  in;  mother's  illness  was  a  false  alarm, 
she  did  not  need  to  stay,  after  all.  This  topic 
occupies  them  until  she  finishes  dinner.  Then,  as 
the  hands  of  the  clock  move  around  to  half-past 
eight,  the  man  reaches  mechanically  for  his  hat. 
"  Now  where  are  you  going,  I  should  like  to 
know?  "  comes  the  stereotyped  question,  with  all 
its  wonted  querulousness ;  and  the  stereotyped  an 
swer  comes  back  through  the  closing  door,  "  Just 
going  down  to  play  pool  with  the  boys  for  half 
an  hour." 

Yet,  in  the  case  of  "  O.  Henry,"  more  perhaps 
than  in  that  of  any  other  popular  story  writer  of 
his  generation,  the  relative  merits  and  deficiencies 
of  his  stories  are  a  matter  of  individual  opinion. 
Discuss  Kipling  in  any  group  of  average  well-read 
men  and  women,  and  you  will  find  a  certain  amount 
of  disagreement ;  some  will  hold  that  the  earlier 
tales  are  easily  superior  to  the  later,  and  others 
will  insist  on  the  opposite  view;  some  will  main 
tain  that  "  They  "  is  his  most  finished  masterpiece, 
the  one  story  that  stands  alone  upon  a  lofty 
height,  and  others  will  see  little  or  nothing  in  it. 


240  "0.  HENRY' 

But  on  the  whole,  the  world  agrees  pretty  well  in 
singling  out  "  Without  Benefit  of  Clergy,"  "  The 
Drums  of  the  Fore-and-Aft,"  "  The  Man  Who 
Would  Be  King,"  "On  the  City  Wall,"  "The 
Courtship  of  Dinah  Shadd,"  while  "  An  Habita 
tion  Enforced,"  "  Mrs.  Bathurst,"  and  "  A  Deal 
in  Cotton  "  would  come  in  as  pretty  close  seconds. 
But  if  you  try  the  same  experiment  regarding  "  O. 
Henry's  "  stories,  you  will  find  a  very  different 
state  of  matters.  Almost  everyone  present  will 
have  read  him,  and  almost  everyone  will  have  his 
or  her  own  personal  preference,  backed  up  by  rea 
sons  to  justify  it.  Half  of  the  time  they  will  not 
remember  the  title, — in  spite  of  the  pains  that 
Mr.  Porter  is  said  to  have  taken  over  his  titles, 
they  are  not  of  the  kind  that  stick  in  the  memory, 
— sometimes  a  good  many  of  the  details  will  have 
faded  out ;  but  what  people  remember  is  the  sharp, 
unlooked-for  twist  at  the  end  of  the  story,  like  the 
snap  of  a  whip  in  a  practised  hand.  Do  you  re 
member,  someone  is  sure  to  ask,  that  story  of  the 
local  champion  prize-fighter,  who  is  just  starting 
in  on  his  honeymoon,  and  whose  bride  expresses  a 
wish  for  peaches?  It  is  late  at  night;  and  even 
in  New  York,  even  in  the  ward  where  he  is  some 
thing  of  a  power,  peaches  in  the  off-season  are 
not  easy  to  find.  Everywhere  he  is  offered  or 
anges,  big,  thin-skinned,  juicy  oranges, — but  not  a 
peach  is  to  be  found.  At  last  he  remembers  a  cer- 


"  O.  HENRY  "  241 

tain  high-life  gambling  resort,  where  everything  is 
done  in  lavish  style,  and  where  the  buffet  is  never 
lacking  in  luscious  hothouse  fruits.  Now  in  all  his 
devious  career,  he  has  stuck  to  his  standards  of 
loyalty,  he  has  stood  for  a  "  square  deal  "  among 
his  kind.  But  to-night  he  is  in  a  dilemma;  his 
bride  has  demanded  peaches,  and  peaches  she  must 
have,  loyalty  or  no  loyalty.  Accordingly,  he  goes 
contrary  to  the  ethics  of  his  class,  takes  part  in  a 
police  raid  on  the  gambling  house,  and  in  the  midst 
of  a  general  rough-and-tumble  fight,  which  is  a 
gem  of  its  kind,  manages  to  make  his  escape  with 
two  rather  dilapidated  peaches.  And  now  comes 
the  snap  of  the  whip ;  when  he  hands  them  to  his 
expectant  bride,  she  looks  at  them  disappointedly, 
and  says,  "  Oh,  did  I  say  peaches  ?  It  was  oranges 
that  I  wanted !  " 

"  You  haven't  told  that  quite  right ! "  someone 
else  rejoins,  "you  don't  emphasize  the  oranges 
enough.  Don't  you  remember  that  everywhere  he 
goes  they  say  to  him, '  Now,  if  it  was  only  oranges 
you  wanted ! '  and  at  the  last  place,  he  turns  on 
them  savagely  and  interrupts  with :  '  If  anyone 
dares  to  say  oranges  again  to  me,  I'll — '  and  words 
fail  him !  But  I'll  tell  you  a  story  ever  so  much  bet 
ter  than  that,  and  that's  the  '  Jimmy  Valentine  ' 
one.  There's  a  short  story  that  really  has  some 
substance  to  it,  a  short  story  that  had  in  it  the  ma 
terial  of  a  full-length  play.  Supposing  you  should 


242  "O.  HENRY  " 

give  a  story  writer  the  following  problem:  Let 
the  hero  be  a  criminal,  perhaps  an  escaped  con 
vict;  under  another  name,  he  has  found  honest 
employment  in  a  town  where  his  past  is  not  known  ; 
he  has  won  the  respect  of  his  new  friends,  and  the 
love  of  a  good  woman ;  his  future  seems  assured. 
And  suddenly,  as  he  is  in  the  act  of  destroying 
the  only  remaining  evidences  of  the  past,  of  cut 
ting  himself  off  even  from  the  memory  of  his  old 
life,  fate  brings  him  face  to  face  with  an  extraor 
dinary  dilemma;  someone  very  close  to  the  woman 
he  loves  is  in  danger  of  death,  tragic  and  agoniz 
ing;  and  it  is  only  by  revealing  his  crime-stained 
past,  only  by  resorting  to  his  criminal  skill  that 
he  can  save  her.  In  other  words,  it  is  the 
man's  reformation,  his  newly  acquired  tenderness 
of  heart  that  is  his  undoing;  there  is  the  problem, 
— and  if  you  assigned  it  to  a  score  of  writers,  I 
doubt  if  one  of  them  would  have  got  a  quarter 
of  the  possibilities  out  of  it  that  *  O.  Henry ' 
did." 

"  That  is  all  very  well,"  objects  someone  else 
at  this  point,  "  '  Jimmy  Valentine  '  was  a  good  job 
of  its  kind.  But  he  deliberately  spoiled  it  at  the 
end  by  one  sentimental  touch,  the  popular  happy 
ending.  We  all  know  that  in  real  life  the  detective 
who  had  spent  weary  months  in  tracking  down  an 
escaped  convict  would  not  let  him  go  at  last,  with 
the  tools  of  his  trade  in  his  hands,  just  because 


"O.  HENRY  *  243 

he  '  cracked '  a  safe  in  time  to  save  a  child  from 
smothering !  But  if  you  want  '  O.  Henry  '  at  his 
best,  take  a  story  like  the  one  about  the  little  girl 
whose  mother  '  didn't  like  that  she  should  play  in 
the  street,'  and  whose  father,  red-headed  and  sul 
len  tempered,  spent  his  Sunday  afternoons  sitting 
by  the  window,  in  his  shirt-sleeves  and  with  his 
heels  on  the  ledge,  leisurely  emptying  a  tin  can  of 
beer.  '  Papa,  won't  you  play  checkers  with  me?  ' 
the  little  girl  asks  wistfully.  '  No,  I'm  busy ;  run 
along  and  play  in  the  street,'  growls  the  man,  and 
the  little  girl  goes,  in  spite  of  the  mother's  feeble 
protest,  '  I  don't  like  that  she  should  play  in  the 
street.'  Well,  when  we  see  that  child  again,  a  few 
years  have  passed;  the  street  has  done  its  worst 
for  her,  and  she  is  in  cruel  trouble.  The  man  whom 
she  has  loved  too  rashly  openly  favors  another  girl 
at  a  big  East  Side  dance  hall,  when,  true  to  her 
street  training,  she  draws  a  knife,  stabs  her  rival, 
and  ends  her  misery  in  the  East  River.  The  scene 
shifts  from  this  world  to  the  next;  an  angel  of 
the  heavenly  detective  corps  has  brought  up  for 
judgment  the  bedraggled  soul  of  a  poor  drowned 
girl,  and  is  proceeding  to  press  the  charge.  i  Hold 
on ! '  says  St.  Peter, — or  words  to  that  effect, 
1  You  have  arrested  the  wrong  person.  The  one 
you  want  to  look  for  is  a  red-headed  man,  in  his 
shirt-sleeves,  drinking  beer  on  Sunday  out  of  a  tin 
can.  You'll  lose  your  job  if  you  aren't  more  care- 


"O.  HENRY" 

ful;  that's  the  fourth  mistake  you've  made  this 
week!'" 

There,  in  brief,  we  have  a  fairly  wide  and  rep 
resentative  selection  of  "  O.  Henry's "  stories. 
They  do  not  pretend  to  include  even  a  tithe  of 
those  one  would  like  to  mention,  if  space  allowed; 
yet  such  as  are  here  included  show  him  pretty 
nearly  at  his  best,  wisely  comprehensive  of  human 
foibles,  indulgently  ironic,  yet  with  an  underlying 
touch  of  sympathy  that  illumines  and  softens 
much  that  is  sordid  and  commonplace.  That  he 
was  a  genuine  artist  cannot  be  questioned ;  that  he 
was  overrated  by  his  own  people  and  generation  is 
more  than  possible.  That  the  large  element  of 
what  was  local  and  temporal  is  likely  to  prove  a 
heavy  handicap  in  the  race  for  immortality  cannot 
be  denied.  As  Anatole  France  sagely  remarked, 
"  one  must  be  light,  in  order  to  fly  across  the  ages." 
At  all  events,  frankness  demands  recognition  of  the 
fact  that  "  O.  Henry,"  while  not  limited  to  a  nar 
row  range,  was  not  possessed  of  a  conspicuously 
wide  one ;  that  he  had  already  achieved  enough  on 
which  to  rest  a  substantial  fame,  and  that  it  is 
doubtful  whether,  had  he  lived,  he  would  ever 
have  surpassed  what  he  has  already  done.  His 
early  death  has  robbed  us  of  the  man,  but  in  all 
likelihood  it  did  not  seriously  rob  him  of  any 
laurels. 


GERTRUDE  ATHERTON 


GERTRUDE  ATHERTON 

IT  was  the  Saturday  Review  which,  about  ten 
years  ago,  in  discussing  one  of  Mrs.  Gertrude 
Atherton's  novels,  borrowed  for  its  caption  one  of 
that  author's  own  phrases,  "  Intellectual  An 
archy."  The  tone  of  the  article  in  question  was 
that  of  incisive  irony  and  unkind  cleverness;  nev 
ertheless,  this  term,  intellectual  anarchy,  may  not 
unfairly  be  applied  even  by  stanch  admirers  of 
Mrs.  Atherton  to  a  large  part  of  her  work,  and 
may  serve  conveniently  as  a  sort  of  condensed 
explanation  both  of  the  degree  of  success  she  has 
achieved  and  of  her  failure  to  gain  certain  greater 
heights  which  seem  to  have  lain  so  easily  within 
her  reach. 

Mrs.  Atherton,  it  must  be  remembered,  has  had 
abundant  opportunity  for  studying  both  life  and 
literary  methods  in  great  extent  and  diversity. 
She  knows  and  understands  her  native  land,  from 
California,  which  has  served  as  a  luminous 
background  for  much  of  her  best  work,  clear  to 
the  eastern  coast :  to  Washington,  the  complex  so 
cial  strata  of  which  she  has  given  us  in  Senator 
North;  to  New  York  and  Westchester  County  that 
245 


246  GERTRUDE  ATHERTON 

she  deftly  satirized  in  Patience  Sparhawk;  to  the 
Adirondacks  that  form  the  setting  for  the  trench 
ant  irony  of  her  Aristocrats: — and,  on  the  other 
hand,  she  has  spent  a  large  portion  of  her  recent 
years  in  Europe,  imbibing  new  impressions  and 
methods,  and  also,  it  must  be  frankly  admitted, 
yielding  now  and  again  to  the  temptation  of  lay 
ing  in  those  foreign  countries  the  scenes  of  sev 
eral  of  her  literary  blunders.  The  net  result  of 
Mrs.  Atherton's  varied  experiences  and  methods 
of  self -training  may  be  summed  up  as  follows: 
that  she  has  an  uncommonly  broad  outlook  upon 
life,  an  enviably  rich  equipment  of  material,  and, 
side  by  side  with  these  advantages,  a  wilful,  al 
most  illogical,  independence,  a  persistent  rebellion 
against  the  bondage  of  literary  schools, — in  short, 
a  riotous  freedom  of  style  and  construction  that 
is  not  unfairly  stigmatized  as  intellectual  anarchy. 
Consequently,  it  is  somewhat  difficult  to  do 
strict  justice  to  Mrs.  Atherton's  contribution  to 
American  fiction ;  somewhat  difficult  accurately  to 
take  the  measure  of  her  achievement,  and,  while 
honestly  pointing  out  wherein  her  shortcomings 
lie,  to  give  her  full  credit  for  merits  which  have 
made  her  one  of  the  forces  that  refuse  to  be  dis 
regarded  in  contemporary  letters.  In  the  first 
place,  then,  it  is  well  to  get  clearly  in  mind  the 
more  obvious  elements  of  strength  in  Mrs.  Ather 
ton's  novels.  She  has  the  big  advantage  of  see- 


GERTRUDE  ATHERTON  247 

ing  life  with  clear-eyed  accuracy  and  without  il 
lusions.  She  is  no  idealist,  inventing  an  imaginary 
world  because  the  world  of  actuality  happens  at 
times  to  contain  much  that  is  sordid  and  painful. 
On  the  contrary,  she  faces  unflinchingly  the  un 
pleasant  truths  of  physical  baseness  and  moral 
obliquity,  mirroring  them  back  with  a  fearlessness 
that  compels  recognition  even  from  those  who 
shrink  from  the  naturalistic  method.  It  is,  of 
course,  always  rash  to  hazard  a  guess  as  to  the 
source  of  any  author's  manner  of  procedure,  but 
in  the  present  case  one  ventures,  with  little  fear 
of  contradiction,  the  opinion  that  Mrs.  Atherton 
owes  to  the  French  realistic  school  her  interest  in 
heredity,  her  frank  treatment  of  the  physical 
facts  of  life  and  her  unusually  wise  understand 
ing  of  the  complex  relation  in  all  big  human  emo 
tions  and  impulses  between  the  flesh  and  the  spirit, 
and  the  impossibility  of  saying  that  hate  and  love, 
jealousy  and  self-sacrifice  can  ever  be  purely 
physical  or  purely  psychic  in  their  origin.  She 
is  right  in  constantly  insisting  upon  the  blending 
of  the  two  in  all  the  relations  of  men  and  women ; 
and  upon  her  fearless  treatment  of  problems  of  sex 
rests  her  best  title  to  be  considered  an  important 
factor  in  fiction.  With  the  possible  exception  of 
the  author  of  Pigs  In  Clover,  she  is  the  only 
woman  now  writing  in  English  who  is  able  to 
handle  questions  of  sex  with  a  masculine  absence 


248  GERTRUDE  ATHERTON 

of   self-consciousness,   and    consequently   with   an 
absence  of  morbid  exaggeration. 

But,  on  the  other  hand,  Mrs.  Atherton  has  not 
acquired,  along  with  a  Continental  frankness  of 
speech,  certain  other  qualities  that  are  equally 
essential  to  the  highest  type  of  art:  namely,  a 
subtle  nicety  of  construction,  an  appreciation  of 
a  finished  technique.  It  is  an  inevitable  conse 
quence  of  her  whole  nature, — her  rugged  inde 
pendence,  her  refusal  to  be  hampered  by  techni 
calities  of  the  art,  her  fearless  brushing  aside  of 
any  arbitrary  barriers  standing  between  her  and 
the  way  in  which  she  happens  for  the  moment  to 
feel  like  writing  a  particular  story, — that  almost 
without  exception  her  books  suffer  from  a  faulty 
technique;  almost  without  exception  we  feel  that 
the  basic  idea  behind  each  of  them,  the  skeleton 
structure  upon  which  they  were  reared,  was 
worthy  and  capable  of  a  development  considerably 
beyond  that  which  she  finally  achieved.  It  needs 
no  very  great  critical  acumen,  no  special  experi 
ence  in  the  art  of  story  construction  to  realize 
that  in  all  of  Mrs.  Atherton's  books  there  is  a 
large  proportion  of  episode  that  is  not  vital  to 
the  development  of  the  central  theme;  that  there 
are  a  certain  number  of  minor  characters  devoid 
of  real  structural  importance,  that  there  are  fre 
quently  secondary  themes  interwoven  with  the  cen 
tral  one  which  constitute  what  might,  in  the  hack- 


GERTRUDE  ATHERTON  249 

neyed  phraseology  of  Mr.  Kipling,  be  accurately 
designated  as  "  another  story " ;  and  in  some 
cases  these  secondary  themes,  these  subordinate 
characters  which  might  have  become  structurally 
important  if  carried  through  to  the  final  chapter, 
suddenly  drop  out  of  sight  midway  through  the 
book,  leaving  us  impotently  wondering  why  they 
were  introduced  at  all.  Indeed,  one  of  the  most 
obvious  faults  of  Mrs.  Atherton's  special  brand 
of  realism  is  that  she  imitates  too  freely  na 
ture's  inscrutable  way  of  injecting  into  the 
intimate  dramas  of  human  life  a  multitude  of  ap 
parently  irrelevant  details.  It  is,  of  course,  a 
common,  every-day  experience  to  find  all  sorts  of 
sordid  and  paltry  interruptions  from  the  outside 
world  heedlessly  intruding  upon  our  intimate  joys 
and  sorrows.  But  there  is  no  hard  and  fast  rule 
ordaining  the  invariable  occurrence  of  such  inter 
ruptions,  and  the  finer  technique  of  fiction  de 
mands  that  their  intrusion  shall  be  reduced  to  a 
minimum.  Otherwise,  the  main  issue,  the  vital 
thing  that  the  novelist  has  to  say,  runs  the  risk 
of  becoming  blurred,  perhaps  of  being  lost  to 
sight  altogether. 

One  of  the  axioms  of  literary  criticism  is  that 
an  author  shall  be  judged  not  merely  by  what  he 
has  done,  but  also  by  what  has  been  the  nature  of 
his  intention.  The  initial  difficulty  that  lies  in 
the  way  of  fairly  judging  Mrs.  Atherton  is  that 


250  GERTRUDE  ATHERTON 

it  often  becomes  difficult  to  conjecture  just  what 
she  really  has  intended  to  do.  In  several  of  her 
books,  as  we  shall  have  occasion  presently  to  ob 
serve  in  detail,  she  has  apparently  had  in  mind 
that  epic  breadth  of  subject  and  of  treatment 
which  characterizes  the  best  work  of  Frank  Nor- 
ris,  Robert  Herrick,  Ellen  Glasgow  and  David 
Graham  Phillips, — a  big  basic  national  problem, 
filling  the  whole  background  of  the  canvas ;  and 
against  it  some  sharply  defined  personal  tragedy, 
thrown  out  in  bold  relief  in  the  middle  of  the  pic 
ture.  This,  at  least,  one  feels  she  has  tried  to 
accomplish;  but  she  has  fallen  short  of  the  ac 
complishment.  The  close  connection  between  the 
general  and  the  special  theme,  a  connection  that 
is  vital  to  the  achievement  of  any  epic  whether  in 
prose  or  in  verse,  is  either  wanting  altogether  or 
else  too  weak  to  fulfil  its  purpose.  One  sees,  or 
rather  half  suspects,  a  number  of  symbolic  char 
acters  and  episodes  planned  apparently  to  develop 
and  accentuate  the  epic  scheme,  but  they  are  either 
abortive  or  else  so  obscure  that  one  hesitates  to 
venture  an  opinion  as  to  what  the  author's  intent 
really  was,  feeling  moderately  certain  that,  if  con 
sulted,  she  would  probably  declare  that  she  had  no 
such  intent  at  all. 

Altogether,  the  literary  methods  of  Mrs.  Ather- 
ton  may  be  summed  up  briefly  as  extraordinarily 
variable  and  arbitrary,  and  nevertheless,  perhaps 


GERTRUDE  ATHERTON  251 

indeed  for  this  very  reason,  at  times  undeniably 
effective.  It  would  be  difficult  to  find  in  the  whole 
range  of  English  fiction  another  writer  of  such 
uneven  quality, — another  writer  whose  best  pages 
are  separated  from  her  worst  by  so  wide  a  gap, 
whose  strongest  scenes  are  so  vastly  superior  to 
her  weakest,  whose  style  at  one  time  is  so  ex 
ceedingly  good,  and  at  others  so  exasperating  to 
an  ear  that  is  sensitive  to  style.  Mrs.  Atherton, 
when  at  her  best,  is  delightful  in  her  ability  to 
make  us  see;  her  picturings  of  old  California, 
which  forms  the  background  of  so  large  a  part 
of  what  must  be  recognized  as  her  best  work,  pos 
sess  an  artistic  charm,  a  sensuous  richness  of  color 
and  at  the  same  time  a  discreet  self-restraint  that 
constitute  a  delight  to  the  ear  and  to  the  mental 
vision.  Mrs.  Atherton,  at  her  worst,  lets  her  pen 
run  riot  in  a  blare  of  words  until  the  printed  para 
graph  shrills  onward  and  upward  into  a  painful 
and  hysterical  shriek.  Contrast,  for  instance, 
the  following  brief  paragraphs,  taken  almost  at 
random  from  her  earlier  writings : 

Carmel  River  sparkled  peacefully  beneath  its 
moving  willows.  The  blue  bay  murmured  to  the  white 
sands  with  the  peace  of  evening.  Close  to  the  little 
beach,  the  old  Mission  hung  its  dilapidated  head. 
Through  its  yawning  arches,  dark  objects  flitted; 
mold  was  on  the  yellow  walls ;  from  yawning  crevice, 


252  GERTRUDE  ATHERTON 

the  rank  grass  grew.  Only  the  tower  still  defied  ele 
ments  and  vandals,  although  the  wind  whistled 
through  its  gaping  windows  and  the  silver  bells  were 
no  more.  The  huts  about  the  church  had  collapsed 
like  old  muscles,  but  in  their  ruin  still  whispered  the 
story  of  the  past. 

And  in  sharp  contrast  with  the  art  of  a  deli 
cate  vignette,  like  the  above,  compare  such  a  riot 
of  words  and  thought  as  the  following: 

As  she  reached  the  sidewalk,  a  squall  caught  and 
nearly  carried  her  off  her  feet.  .  .  .  She  cursed  aloud. 
She  let  fly  all  the  maledictions,  English  and  Spanish, 
of  which  she  had  knowledge.  She  raised  her  voice 
and  pierced  the  gale,  the  furious  energy  of  her  words 
hissing  like  escaping  steam.  She  raised  her  voice 
still  higher  and  shrieked  her  profane  arraignment  of 
all  things  mundane  in  a  final  ecstasy  of  nervous  aban 
donment. 

It  is  this  tendency  to  vociferate  a  little  too 
shrilly,  this  inability  to  sustain  the  key,  that  sud 
denly  has  the  effect  of  letting  a  whole  scene  drop 
from  grim  reality  into  something  akin  to  melo 
drama.  In  spite  of  this,  Mrs.  Atherton  compels 
admiration  for  her  unwavering  independence,  her 
splendid  strength  when  she  is  at  her  best,  and 
for  the  rich  glow  and  passion  of  pulsing  life  that 


GERTRUDE  ATHERTON  253 

she  injects  into  the  printed  page,  and  that  she 
undoubtedly  would  fall  short  of  attaining  with  a 
less  rugged  and  better  disciplined  style. 

A  brief  analysis  of  certain  representative  vol 
umes  will  make  clearer  the  scope  and  the  limita 
tions  of  Mrs.  Atherton's  attainments.  To  discuss 
in  detail  every  one  of  the  score  of  volumes  which 
she  has  put  forth  during  nearly  as  many  years 
would  not  only  be  impracticable  but  would  seri 
ously  blur  the  resulting  impression.  But  if  we 
select,  let  us  say,  such  volumes  as  The  Calif  omi- 
ans,  Patience  Sparhawk,  Senator  North,  Riders  of 
Kings  and  Ancestors,  we  shall  have  an  easily  man 
ageable  group  that  admirably  shows  her  range 
of  power,  her  chief  interests  in  the  problems  of 
modern  social  life,  as  well  as  her  methods  and  her 
errors  of  technique.  Of  Mrs.  Atherton  as  a  short- 
story  writer  there  seems  no  need  to  speak  spe 
cifically.  The  Splendid  Idle  Forties  with  its 
kaleidoscopic  pictures  of  the  life  of  old  Califor 
nia,  a  life  already  vanishing  into  the  realm  of 
forgotten  things,  has  a  quality  that  refuses  to  be 
disregarded, — a  quality  of  exotic  beauty,  an  il 
lusive  fragrance,  a  strange  mingling  of  pride  and 
passion  and  languor.  Yet  the  most  that  can  be 
said  of  it  is  that  it  shows  more  of  promise  than 
of  fulfilment,  and  that  the  best  that  it  contains  is 
to  be  met  with  again,  worked  out  with  a  surer 
touch,  in  her  longer  California  novels. 


254  GERTRUDE  ATHERTON 

It  is  a  little  rash,  in  the  case  of  a  novelist  whose 
interests  in  life  are  so  broad  as  Mrs.  Atherton's, 
and  whose  point  of  view  is  so  cosmopolitan,  to  at 
tempt  to  find  some  unifying  principle,  some  com 
mon  keynote  serving  to  harmonize  her  work  as  a 
whole.  And  yet,  in  Mrs.  Atherton's  case,  such  an 
attempt  may  be  made,  with  less  danger,  than  in  the 
case  of  many  of  her  contemporaries,  of  being  ac 
cused  of  a  far-fetched,  artificial  interpretation. 
No  one  can  read  her  books  without  being  aware  of 
the  keen  interest  she  has  always  taken  in  the  spread 
of  the  modern  democratic  movement,  in  our  politi 
cal,  social  and  moral  attitude  toward  life.  And  still 
more  keenly  is  she  concerned  with  the  inevitable  con 
flict  constantly  in  progress  between  this  younger, 
stronger  democratic  movement  and  the  inherited 
prejudices  of  an  older?  aristocratic  conservatism. 
Most  of  all,  she  has  chosen,  again  and  again,  with 
many  minor  variations,  to  study  the  struggle  of  a 
young  woman  striving  to  readjust  herself  to  the 
new  order  of  things,  trying  to  conquer  her  own 
heredity,  to  put  aside  the  conventions  in  which 
she  has  been  nurtured,  and  to  live  her  own  life  in 
independence  and  liberty.  This  is  the  dominant 
note  of  Senator  North,  in  which  Betty  Madison's 
long  fight  for  happiness  is  the  direct  outcome  of 
rebelling  against  the  traditions  of  her  family,  the 
iron-bound  prejudices  of  her  mother.  Numbering 
themselves  among  the  oldest  and  most  exclusive 


GERTRUDE  ATHERTON  255 

families  in  Washington,  they  have  made  it  their 
boast  that  no  politician  has  ever  been  received 
within  their  doors.  Betty,  in  the  prime  of  splen 
did  young  womanhood,  overrules  her  mother's 
wishes,  seeks  the  acquaintance  of  Representatives 
and  Senators,  frequents  the  gallery  of  the  Senate 
Chamber,  establishes  a  salon  in  which  politics  is 
the  prevailing  topic, — and,  to  the  destruction  of 
her  peace  of  mind,  falls  in  love  with  Senator 
North,  realizing  only  too  late  that  she  has  given 
her  heart  to  a  man  already  married. 

The  same  note,  although  not  quite  so  insistent, 
makes  itself  heard  in  The  Calif orrimns.  Magda- 
lena  Yorba  is  the  daughter  of  a  Spanish  father 
and  a  New  England  mother.  She  is  perpetually 
at  war  with  herself,  constantly  suffering  from  the 
clash  between  Spanish  pride  and  New  England 
conscience;  between  passive  acceptance  of  that 
obedience  to  convention  which  the  women  of  her 
father's  house  had  always  shown,  and  that  inborn 
sense  of  the  individual  right  to  live  one's  own  life 
in  one's  own  way,  which  came  to  her  through  gen 
erations  of  Puritan  blood.  The  particular  way 
in  which  she  asserts  this  independence  seems  not 
especially  momentous  in  itself,  nor  even  vital  to 
the  structure  of  the  story,  but  it  serves  to  keep 
before  us  her  ineffectual  spirit  of  revolt.  Mag- 
dalena,  unlike  the  other  girls  of  her  social  class, 
has  a  restless  brain,  thirsting  for  knowledge  and 


256  GERTRUDE  ATHERTON 

for  an  opportunity  to  achieve  and  to  create.  Her 
secret  ambition  is  to  become  an  author.  But  to 
Don  Roberto  Yorba,  for  a  daughter  of  his  house 
to  essay  to  write  is  in  itself  an  offense,  while  to 
publish  a  book  and  allow  her  name  to  appear  in 
print  would  be  shame  unspeakable.  The  main 
theme  of  the  story  is  only  loosely  connected  with 
that  of  the  girl's  secret  longing  for  a  novelist's 
fame;  but  it  does  have  to  do  very  distinctly  with 
the  repressed  conditions  under  which  Magdalena 
has  matured — conditions  that  have  handicapped 
her  for  the  inevitable  social  game,  and  make  it 
possible  for  another  girl,  reared  in  greater  free 
dom,  to  intervene  and  rob  her  of  the  man  she 
loves. 

Patience  Sparhawk  fits  in  less  well  to  the  pre 
vailing  scheme  of  Mrs.  Atherton's  books.  But  at 
least  it  is  the  story  of  a  young  woman's  struggle 
against  heredity,  against  the  evil  impulses  be 
queathed  her  by  her  mother,  the  degradation  of 
her  mother's  memory.  And  in  the  later  develop 
ment  of  the  book  we  get,  to  some  extent,  the  clash 
between  the  exclusive  class  and  the  democracy, 
when  Patience  Sparhawk,  wrongly  accused  of  the 
murder  of  her  husband,  fights  a  losing  battle  for 
her  life  in  court,  in  the  public  press,  and  even  at 
the  hands  of  the  State  Governor, — partly  because 
the  evidence  looks  black  against  her,  but  also,  as 
Mrs.  Atherton  makes  us  feel,  because  she  is  an 


GERTRUDE  ATHERTON  257 

aristocrat  suffering  judgment  at  the  hands  of  the 
masses. 

Rulers  of  Kings  and  Ancestors,  among  Mrs. 
Atherton's  later  volumes,  are  two  books  which  it 
is  most  enlightening  and  salutary  to  study  side 
by  side,  for  they  reveal  her  respectively  at  her 
worst  and  at  her  best.  Rulers  of  Kings  is  a  pre 
posterous  book,  a  book  of  opera-s-bouffes  pure 
and  simple,  a  book  of  genius  seemingly  gone 
mad  and  running  amuck  through  the  palaces  of 
Europe,  ruthlessly  trampling  on  the  divine  rights 
of  kings  and  caricaturing  the  reigning  monarchs 
in  the  spirit  of  a  Sunday  supplement  cartoonist. 
It  is  distinctly  depressing  to  have  been  under  the 
necessity  of  reading  so  bad  a  book.  And  what 
makes  it  not  merely  depressing,  but  irritating  as 
well,  is  the  conviction  that  Mrs.  Atherton  is  per 
fectly  well  aware  of  what  she  has  done ;  and  that 
she  has  done  it  deliberately,  after  much  careful 
thought.  For  the  benefit  of  readers  who  may  not 
happen  to  have  read  Rulers  of  Kings,  it  may  be 
worth  while  very  briefly  to  state  the  sum  and  sub 
stance  of  it.  The  book  opens  with  the  following 
paragraph : 

When  Fessenden  Abbott  heard  that  he  was  to  in 
herit  four  hundred  million  dollars,  he  experienced  the 
profoundest  discouragement  he  was  ever  to  know, 
except  on  that  midnight  ten  years  later  when  he  stood 


258  GERTRUDE  ATHERTON 

on  a  moonlit  balcony  in  Hungary,  alone  with  the 
daughter  of  an  emperor,  and  opened  his  contemptuous 
American  mind  to  the  deeper  problems  of  Europe. 

A  man  equipped  with  a  contemptuous  American 
mind  and  four  hundred  million  dollars  may  be  re 
lied  upon  to  make  some  stir  in  the  world.  Fes- 
senden  Abbott's  special  way  of  getting  into  mis 
chief  is  to  fall  in  love  with  an  Austrian  princess, 
a  daughter  of  the  Emperor  Franz-Joseph,  Renata 
by  name,  whom  you  will  search  for  in  vain  in  the 
Almanack  de  Gotha,  for  the  simple  reason  that 
Mrs.  Atherton  invented  her  for  the  occasion. 
Now,  if  there  is  one  court  in  Europe  that  is,  more 
than  any  other,  a  stronghold  of  the  divine  right 
of  kings,  it  is  that  of  the  Hapsburgs,  the  one 
court  where  the  marriage  of  a  princess  with  an 
American  is  not  merely  a  thing  forbidden,  but  sim 
ply  unthinkable,  inconceivable,  impossible.  It  is 
true  that  just  once  in  the  world's  history  a  com 
moner  did  precisely  this  impossible,  inconceivable 
thing,  a  dauntless  firebrand  of  a  man  from  Corsica. 
Had  Napoleon  never  really  lived,  and  had  some 
audacious  novelist  of  the  Dumas  type  invented 
him,  conceived  his  fantastic  career,  his  juggernaut 
progress  over  the  fallen  thrones  of  Europe,  then 
by  rights  we  might  have  had  a  novel  entitled  to 
call  itself  Riders  of  Kings.  But  Fessenden  Ab 
bott,  with  his  contemptuous  American  mind,  is 


GERTRUDE  ATHERTON  259 

sadly  out  of  his  element.  When  we  listen  to  his 
stolen  interviews  with  Renata,  we  wonder  whether 
he  is  not  a  petty  clerk  who  has  taken  his  em 
ployer's  daughter  for  a  Sunday  outing  to  Coney 
Island.  Frankly,  princesses  do  not  talk  that  way. 
What  happens  in  Mrs.  Atherton's  story  is  this : 
Fessenden  Abbott  possesses  the  rights  to  an  in 
vention  which  makes  future  warfare  an  impossi 
bility.  It  is  an  explosive  which  starts  in  motion 
deadly  whirlwinds  that  simply  sweep  out  of  ex 
istence  any  armed  force  venturing  to  stand  in  the 
way.  Fessenden  will  sell  his  invention  to  Ger 
many  and  Austria,  in  exchange  for  Franz-Joseph's 
daughter.  Then,  as  he  points  out,  these  two  pow 
ers  can  declare  war  upon  Russia  and  the  East,  and 
wipe  them  out  of  existence.  But  if  his  offer  is 
refused,  he  will  instead  sell  the  invention  to  Rus 
sia  and,  to  quote  his  ultimatum  to  Franz-Joseph, 
"  when  Austria  is  a  province  of  Russia,  your 
daughter  will  be  the  first  prisoner  set  free."  The 
Emperor's  face  turns  purple  and  his  "  heavy 
Hapsburg  mouth  "  trembles — but  he  capitulates 
and  his  daughter  marries  the  American,  with  the 
paternal  blessing. 

The  only  point  of  spending  so  much  space  upon 
this  literary  blunder  is  to  show  that  here,  as  else 
where,  Mrs.  Atherton  has  the  obsession  of  a  tri 
umphant  democracy,  riding  rough-shod  over  Eu 
rope's  proudest  aristocrats.  In  contrast  to  this, 


260  GERTRUDE  ATHERTON 

it  is  like  a  breath  of  ozone  to  turn  to  Ancestors, 
in  which  the  same  general  theme  is  treated  not 
merely  with  sanity,  but  with  a  bigness,  a  compre 
hension,  a  convincing  force  that  make  it  easily  the 
most  important  contribution  she  has  yet  made  to 
American  fiction.  It  is  not  surprising  that  she 
has  put  into  it  so  much  of  her  best  work.  She 
is  writing,  not  fantastic  melodrama  about  comic- 
opera  kings,  but  plain  truth  about  real  people 
whom  she  may  have  known  personally.  She  is 
showing,  sanely  and  convincingly,  the  manner  in 
which  certain  almost  forgotten  strains  of  heredity 
will  come  to  the  surface  and  assert  their  right  to 
a  share  in  working  out  our  destiny ;  and,  lastly, 
she  is  picturing  how  the  magic  glamor  of  Cali 
fornia  may  react  upon  a  conservative  Englishman, 
and  little  by  little  make  a  new  man  of  him,  until 
he  ends  by  proving  himself  a  better  American  than 
the  Californians  themselves.  It  is  a  big  book  un 
deniably,  a  book  of  almost  epic  sweep,  a  book 
whose  power  and  value  are  likely  in  a  measure 
to  be  missed,  if  we  do  not  realize  that  the  pro 
tagonist  is  not  Jack  Gwynne,  the  Americanized 
Englishman,  nor  Isabel  Otis,  the  California  girl 
who  wins  his  love, — but  the  city  of  San  Francisco 
which  dominates  the  book  like  a  regal  and  capri 
cious  heroine,  and  whose  hour  of  agony  by  earth 
quake  and  by  fire  closes  the  volume  with  the  shadow 
of  a  cosmic  tragedy. 


GERTRUDE  ATHERTON  261 

Nevertheless,  even  Ancestors  is  faulty  in  tech 
nique.  Mrs.  Atherton  was  on  the  right  track,  as 
she  had  been  many  times  before.  San  Francisco, 
the  gateway  of  the  West,  the  big  and  splendid 
symbol  of  American  liberty,  dominating  the  whole 
volume;  and  against  this  spectacular  background, 
a  little  group  of  individual  lives,  handicapped  by 
a  complex  heredity,  slowly  and  bravely  working 
their  way  to  freedom  and  to  happiness, — why,  the 
book  is  built  on  a  plan  of  Zolaesque  magnitude 
and  boldness.  The  trouble  is  that  the  two  themes, 
the  general  and  the  specific,  are  not  closely  enough 
correlated ;  that  many  of  the  episodes  which  take 
place  in  San  Francisco  might  just  as  well  have 
been  enacted  elsewhere ;  and  that  even  the  tre 
mendous  final  chapter,  picturing  the  devastation 
of  the  great  earthquake,  is  not  a  structural  ne 
cessity,  not  a  solution  of  any  problem,  nor  a 
rounding  out  of  the  specific  human  story.  The 
latter  has  been  amply  solved  in  an  earlier  chapter ; 
and  the  earthquake  is  merely  like  the  last  piece 
played  by  the  orchestra  after  the  curtain  has  been 
rung  down  and  the  audience  is  filing  out. 

One  more  example  of  what  may  be  called 
slovenly  technique  is  to  be  noted  in  one  of  the 
books  already  discussed,  Senator  North.  Appar 
ently,  Mrs.  Atherton  had  in  mind  in  this  case  also 
a  volume  of  epic  breadth,  with  Washington  and 
the  whole  scheme  of  national  politics  as  the  big, 


262  GERTRUDE  ATHERTON 

dominant  general  theme,  and  the  love  of  an  ardent 
young  woman  for  one  of  the  nation's  lawmakers 
as  the  specific  and  individual  point  of  interest. 
But  here  again  the  relation  between  the  two  themes 
is  too  loosely  knit.  We  hear  a  good  deal  about 
political  life;  we  frequent  the  houses  of  Congress, 
the  homes  of  diplomats,  the  motley  gatherings  of 
public  functions.  But,  after  all,  the  specific  hu 
man  interest  of  the  book,  the  old,  old  story  of  a 
woman  bravely  fighting  against  her  love  for  a 
married  man,  is  independent  of  the  political  back 
ground,  independent  of  party  lines,  independent 
even  of  the  Cuban  War,  with  which  the  book  con 
cludes.  As  a  story  of  two  human  lives,  it  would 
have  been  essentially  the  same,  had  the  setting 
been  laid  in  No-man's  Land,  outside  of  time  and 
space. 

There  is,  however,  one  subordinate  story  inter 
woven  in  Senator  North,  which,  if  it  could  have 
been  made  into  a  book  apart,  would  have  been  an 
almost  flawless  bit  of  technique.  This  is  the  story 
of  Betty  Madison's  half-sister  Harriet,  the  ille 
gitimate  daughter  of  her  father  and  an  octoroon. 
Harriet  is  practically  a  white  woman  but  for  a 
scarcely  perceptible  blueness  at  the  base  of  her 
finger-nails.  The  secret  of  her  birth  is  well  kept, 
and  eventually  she  marries  Betty's  cousin,  a  South 
erner  full  of  the  pride  of  blood  and  race.  The 
secret  might  have  come  out  in  any  one  of  a  dozen 


GERTRUDE  ATHERTON  263 

ways,  but  the  way  in  which  it  does  come  out  is 
structurally  perfect.  White  though  she  is,  Har 
riet  inherits  certain  strains  of  negro  temperament, 
among  others  the  sort  of  religious  fervor  that 
finds  vent  in  revival  meetings,  loud  hallelujahs  and 
gospel  songs.  And  one  night,  when  she  returns 
from  a  negro  camp-meeting  almost  in  a  religious 
trance,  she  hysterically  confesses  to  her  husband 
the  truth  about  the  one-sixteenth  strain  of  colored 
blood,  too  hysterical  to  foresee  that  he  will  in 
evitably  kill  himself  and  that  her  own  suicide  is 
the  logical  sequel.  This  character  of  Harriet  is 
perhaps  the  best  bit  of  feminine  analysis  that  Mrs. 
Atherton  ever  did ;  and  it  is  a  pity  that  it  is  buried 
away  in  a  volume  where  its  importance  is  unfairly 
overshadowed  by  far  less  vital  episodes. 

And  now,  briefly,  what  is  Mrs.  Atherton's  place 
among  the  novelists  of  her  time  and  generation? 
That  she  is  a  vital,  living  force  cannot  be  denied. 
That  she  has  won  and  holds  her  public  is  also 
unquestionable.  Much  that  she  has  done  is  well 
deserving  of  the  recognition  it  has  received.  On 
the  other  hand,  there  is  much  in  her  writings  that 
is  indefensible.  It  is  well,  however,  for  the  world 
of  letters  as  a  whole,  in  a  generation  when  form 
and  technique  are  in  danger  of  being  raised  up 
as  a  fetich,  to  have  now  and  then  a  fearless  and 
untrammeled  spirit,  refusing  to  be  bound  by  other 
laws  and  conventions  than  those  of  her  own  mak- 


264  GERTRUDE  ATHERTON 

ing, — especially  when  she  justifies  herself  from 
time  to  time  by  the  sheer  strength,  the  rugged  sin 
cerity  of  such  books  as  The  Californians  and 
Ancestors,  It  is  no  bad  thing  for  a  nation's  lit 
erature  to  be  stirred  now  and  again  by  the  sort  of 
intellectual  anarchy  that  is  represented  by  Mrs. 
Atherton  at  her  best. 


OWEN  WISTER 


OWEN  WISTER 

No  matter  how  willingly  we  may  obey  Can- 
dide's  wise  injunction  to  cultivate  our  garden,  it 
is  well  to  remember  that  not  every  writer  can 
achieve  an  equal  profusion  and  variety,  nor  an 
equal  clearness  of  plan  and  purpose.  Not  to 
every  one  is  it  given  to  grow  oranges  and  lemons, 
citrons  and  pistachios  in  oriental  opulence.  There 
are  some  literary  gardens  that  bring  with  them 
an  old-time  fragrance  of  mignonette  and  sweet 
alyssum,  with  sunflowers  and  hollyhocks  in  the 
background ;  others  again  may  be  only  an  humble 
Cabbage  Patch,  or  perhaps  a  Garden  of  Allah,  all 
burning  sand  and  sunshine, — but  born  of  a  sin 
gleness  of  purpose,  distinct  and  unmistakable. 
But  how,  at  first  sight,  is  one  to  interpret  a 
garden  composed  of  much  sagebrush,  one  tower 
ing  redwood,  a  magnolia  and  a  head  of  Boston 
lettuce?  Yet  this,  in  all  courtesy  be  it  said,  is  a 
fair  inventory  of  the  harvest  which  up  to  the 
present  time  has  rewarded  Mr.  Wister's  tillage 
in  the  fertile  soil  of  his  imagination.  His  short 
stories  of  Western  ranch  life,  ranging  from  Arizona 
to  Wyoming  and  comprising  practically  all  his 
265 


266  OWEN  WISTER 

early  work  and  an  ample  share  of  his  later,  are 
literally  as  redolent  of  the  soil,  as  unmistakably 
indigenous,  in  color,  form  and  atmosphere,  as  is 
the  gray-green  aromatic  herbage  that  forms  so 
conspicuous  a  feature  of  their  setting.  His  one 
full-length  novel,  The  Virginian,  has  a  certain 
primal  bigness  about  it  that  makes  it  seem  to 
loom  up,  tree-like,  in  rugged  dignity,  a  growth 
of  nature  rather  than  of  art.  Lady  Baltimore 
has  by  contrast  a  sort  of  hot-house  charm ;  that 
southern  softness  of  manners  and  of  speech,  as 
unmistakable  and  as  delightful  in  their  way  as  the 
form  and  fragrance  of  a  magnolia  bloom.  And 
even  Boston  lettuce  has  not  a  flavor  more  local, 
a  more  unsuspected  generosity  of  close-packed  and 
succulent  substance  than  that  blithe  little  satire 
of  college  life,  Philosophy  Four,  with  its  un 
pretentious  outward  showing,  and  the  golden  wis 
dom  hidden  at  its  heart. 

Yet  it  is  precisely  the  informality  of  Mr. 
Wister's  garden,  the  absence  of  neat  paths  and 
close  clipped  hedge-rows,  that  gives  the  first 
important  clue  to  his  literary  methods.  The  sim 
ple  fact  is  that  Mr.  Wister  has  never  attempted  to 
pre-empt  any  special  corner  of  the  habitable 
world  and  make  it  his  own,  in  any  such  sense  as 
Mrs.  Wilkins-Freeman  pre-empted  New  England, 
Mr.  Allen,  Kentucky,  or  Mr.  Cable,  New  Orleans. 
The  fact  that  he  has  become  identified  in  the  popu- 


OWEN  WISTER  267 

lar  mind  with  certain  sections  of  the  West  is  due 
less  to  his  interest  in  the  life  of  the  plains  as  some 
thing  curious  and  anomalous,  something  different 
from  humanity  as  we  ordinarily  understand  it, 
than  to  his  recognition  of  the  far  more  important 
fact  that  underneath  the  picturesque  and  striking 
surface  differences,  human  nature  west  and  east 
is  at  heart  a  fairly  constant  quantity.  His  ob 
vious  love  for  the  characters  of  his  own  creating, 
Scipio  Lemoyne  and  Steve  and  The  Virginian,  is 
not  because  they  were  cowboys,  with  a  strange 
dialect  and  a  still  stranger  moral  code,  but  be 
cause,  when  one  came  to  know  them,  one  found 
them  men,  acting  as  the  best  of  us  might  act  if 
exposed  to  like  conditions.  In  this  connection,  it 
is  a  significant  fact  that  Mr.  Wister  almost  al 
ways  writes  frankly  as  an  outsider,  bringing  him 
self  into  the  story  after  the  method  of  Mr.  Kip 
ling's  earlier  tales,  and  writing  in  the  first  person 
as  the  one  who  has  witnessed  certain  events  or  to 
whom  certain  others  were  repeated  at  first  hand. 
The  result  of  this  method  is  that  we  are  all  the 
time  forced  to  see  and  measure  whatever  is  local 
and  transitory  through  alien  eyes,  and  that  we 
think  of  such  a  book  as  The  Virginian,  not  as  the 
record  of  a  phase  of  life  that  has  already  passed 
away,  but  as  a  vital  and  enduring  presentment  of 
types  and  characters  that  are  most  thoroughly, 
most  widely,  most  delightfully  American, 


268  OWEN  WISTER 

After  conceding  freely  and  gladly  these  merits 
to  Mr.  Wister,  it  will  not  be  thought  ungenerous 
to  proceed  to  point  out  some  of  his  shortcomings 
and  to  say  at  once  frankly  that  he  is  one  of  those 
story  tellers  who  have  won  fame  not  because  of 
their  craftsmanship,  but  in  spite  of  their  lack 
of  it.  To  the  fundamental  doctrine  of  economy 
of  means  he  shows  a  blithe  indifference;  in  his 
long  stories  and  his  shorter  ones  alike,  he  refuses 
to  trim  his  hedges  or  to  prune  back  his  vines,  pre 
ferring  to  let  them  luxuriate,  weed-like,  in  what 
soever  direction  they  list.  To  some  extent  it  is  a 
handicap  for  an  author  to  have  a  too  facile  charm 
of  style.  The  writer  who  is  conscious  that,  if  he 
allows  himself  to  become  garrulous,  if  he  strays  a 
hair's-breadth  beyond  the  strict  letter  of  his 
theme,  he  will  be  voted  a  bore,  learns  at  an  early 
stage  the  fine  art  of  suppression,  which  Emerson 
once  declared  to  be  the  supreme  quality  of  a  lit 
erary  style.  But  the  genial  narrator  who  is  as 
sured  of  his  hold  upon  his  audience,  even  when 
he  rambles  far  afield,  with  many  a  digression, 
many  a  "  this  reminds  me,"  is  not  likely  to  ham 
per  himself  with  a  rigid  technique,  and  thereby 
lose  the  chance  of  drawing  forth  an  additional 
laugh,  or  winning  an  extra  round  of  applause. 
This  ability  to  digress  with  impunity  Mr.  Wister 
has  to  an  unusual  extent;  even  through  the  me 
dium  of  the  printed  page,  one  is  always  conscious 


OWEN  WISTER  269 

of  a  pleasing  personality,  and  can  almost  see  the 
indulgent  smile  or  the  amused  twinkle  of  the 
eye  that  must  accompany  certain  characteristic 
flashes  of  humor.  For  there  can  be  no  question 
that,  besides  being  a  story  teller,  the  creator 
of  "  Emly "  and  the  "  Frawg's  legs  "  episode 
must  be  numbered  among  our  recognized  Amer 
ican  humorists, — and  what  is  more,  enrolled 
as  one  who  has  never,  for  the  sake  of  scoring 
a  point,  degraded  humor  to  the  level  of  farce 
comedy. 

Now,  since  an  author  is  known  by  the  company 
that  he  keeps  upon  his  bookshelves,  or  at  least 
by  that  smaller  group  which  he  considers  worthy 
of  emulation,  it  is  worth  while  to  pause  for  a  mo 
ment  over  Mr.  Wister's  own  confessions,  in  the 
preface  to  his  latest  published  volume,  Members 
of  the  Family.  He  tells  us,  for  instance,  that  so 
far  back  as  1884  Mr.  Howells  had  "  felt  his  lit 
erary  pulse  and  pronounced  it  promising  " ;  that 
"  a  quickening  came  from  the  pages  of  Steven 
son,"  and  "  a  far  stronger  shove  next  from  the 
genius  of  Plain  Tales  from  the  Hills " ;  and, 
oddly  enough,  that  "  the  final  push  happened  to 
be  given  by  Prosper  Merimee."  All  of  these  in 
fluences,  with  the  exception  of  the  last  mentioned, 
are  of  course  obvious  enough  to  any  clear-eyed 
critic ;  but  it  is  interesting  to  know  that  they  were 
influences  of  the  conscious  sort,  and  that  Mr.  Wis- 


270  OWEN  WISTER 

ter  frankly  recognizes  his  indebtedness.  The  in~ 
fluence  of  Merimee,  however,  is  one  that  we  might 
have  been  a  long  time  in  discovering,  without 
this  direct  acknowledgment.  Yet  the  connec 
tion  is  sufficiently  easy  to  perceive,  when  once  at 
tention  has  been  directed  to  it :  Merimee,  like  Wis- 
ter,  found  his  interest  aroused  and  his  imagination 
stimulated  chiefly  by  new  and  foreign  environ 
ments, — as  in  his  best-known  stories,  Colombo,, 
Carmen,  La  Venus  d'llle, — wherein  he  could  study, 
without  criticising,  the  manner  in  which  the  fun 
damental  problems  of  human  nature  work  them 
selves  out  under  the  special  limitations  of  Corsican 
or  Spanish  manners  and  customs.  But  his  list  of 
acknowledgments  is  not  yet  complete;  there  is 
one  more  to  whom  he  professes  a  debt  of  grati 
tude,  namely,  Henry  James, — and  the  heart-felt 
tribute  that  he  proceeds  to  pay  to  the  author  of 
The  Ambassadors  is  the  best  proof  that,  what 
ever  his  own  shortcomings  in  technique  may  be, 
Mr.  Wister's  instinctive  recognition  of  a  master 
craftsman  is  beyond  reproach.  His  own  words 
in  this  connection  deserve  not  only  to  be  quoted  but 
cordially  indorsed,  because  if  more  of  our  young 
novelists  to-day  had  even  a  rudimentary  idea  of 
the  amount  that  Henry  James  might  teach  them, 
American  fiction  would  be  less  conspicuous 
for  its  prolificness  and  more  conspicuous  for  its 
finer  and  higher  standards.  The  influence  is,  as 


OWEN  WISTER  271 

he  points   out,  already   at  work,  and  slowly  but 
surely  it  is  bound  to  spread: 

It  is  significant  to  note  how  this  master  seems  to 
be  teaching  a  numerous  young  generation.  Often  do 
I  pick  up  some  popular  magazine  and  read  a  story 
(one  even  of  murder,  it  may  be,  in  tropic  seas  or  city 
slums),  where  some  canny  bit  of  foreshortening,  of 
presentation,  reveals  the  spreading  influence,  and  I 
say,  "  Ah,  my  friend,  never  would  you  have  found 
out  how  to  do  that  if  Henry  James  hadn't  set  you 
thinking!  " 

But  in  authorship,  for  every  one  influence  of 
which  we  are  conscious,  there  are  a  dozen  that 
work  unguessed,  unsuspected.  And  in  Mr.  Wis- 
ter's  case,  had  his  acquaintance  with  modern  fic 
tion  been  limited  solely  to  those  authors  to  whom 
he  pays  tribute,  a  work  like  The  Virginian,  with 
all  its  faults,  would  be  inconceivable.  What  the 
other  influences  have  been,  it  is  needless  here  to 
conjecture,  for  the  sufficient  and  practical  rea 
son  that  his  own  admissions  prove  him  to  be  of 
widely  catholic  tastes,  as  free  from  attachment 
to  any  particular  school  as,  let  us  say,  was  Marion 
Crawford.  Howells,  the  veteran  champion  of 
realism;  James,  the  subtlest  of  English  psy- 
chologues ;  Stevenson,  the  belated  romanticist,  all 
find  equal  favor  in  his  sight,  not  because  of  what 
they  profess,  but  because  he  realizes  that  each  of 


272  OWEN  WISTER 

them  achieves  quite  admirably  the  special  thing 
that  he  has  undertaken  to  do.  In  other  words, 
Mr.  Wister  is  an  eclectic  both  in  his  theories  and 
his  practice  of  fiction.  It  is  impossible  to  pro 
nounce  him  realist  or  romanticist,  symbolist  or 
psychologue.  His  methods  vary,  not  only  from 
book  to  book,  but  from  chapter  to  chapter  in  the 
same  book.  Maupassant,  for  instance,  might  have 
written  more  than  one  episode  in  The  Virginian, — 
the  lynching  of  the  cattle-thieves,  for  instance, 
or  that  other  even  more  cruel  chapter  in  which  a 
human  fiend  avenges  himself  upon  a  horse  driven 
beyond  its  strength,  by  gouging  out  its  eye.  But 
none  but  a  dreamer  could  have  written  the  idyl  of 
Molly's  marriage  to  the  Virginian,  and  the  honey 
moon  on  the  sylvan  island,  the  only  fault  of  which 
is  that  it  was  all  too  beautiful  to  be  quite  true. 

Having  acquired  this  initial  perspective  of  Mr. 
Wister's  literary  theory  and  practice,  as  a  whole, 
we  may  now  profitably  take  up  the  separate  works 
in  detail,  according  to  the  division  suggested  by 
our  opening  symbolism  of  the  garden.  And  first 
of  all,  as  to  the  Sagebrush  portion  of  his  work, 
the  stories  of  rather  uneven  merit,  ranging  all  the 
way  from  mediocre  to  extremely  good,  that  made 
up  the  contents  of  such  early  volumes  as  Red 
Men  and  White  and  The  Jimmy  John  Boss: — well, 
to  be  quite  candid,  a  detailed  analysis  of  them  would 
add  nothing  of  real  value  to  a  critical  estimate  of 


OWEN  WISTER  273 

their  author,  because  they  are  in  a  measure  ap 
prentice  work.  They  were  written  while  Mr.  Wis- 
ter  was,  in  the  phrase  of  the  Literary  Shop,  learn 
ing  his  job.  Had  he  never  done  anything  better, 
"  The  Jimmyjohn  Boss," — the  opening  story  in 
the  volume  of  that  name, — narrating  how  a  cow 
boy,  whose  sole  education  has  been  acquired  in  the 
school  of  adversity,  and  whose  chief  asset  is 
an  indomitable  nerve,  is  made  foreman  of  the  most 
lawless  and  undisciplined  set  of  ruffians  on  any 
ranch  in  the  State,  takes  them  firmly  in  hand,  and 
even  after  a  temporary  rebellion  when  they  are 
crazed  with  drink,  succeeds  in  getting  back  con 
trol  and  making  himself  undisputed  master, — all 
this,  and  a  dozen  other  tales,  would  have  merited 
a  certain  amount  of  critical  praise.  But,  as  it 
happens,  they  were  merely  an  earnest  of  something 
far  better  yet  to  come.  And  in  due  time  that 
something  better  came  in  the  form  of  The  Vir 
ginian,  which  in  its  genesis  is  nothing  more  nor 
less  than  an  accretion  of  short  stories, — just  as 
Maupassant's  first  novel,  Une  Vie,  is  an  assemblage 
of  short  stories, — and  with  the  additional  point 
of  resemblance,  that  in  both  cases  a  number  of  the 
stories  have  been  published  separately ;  in  the  case 
of  The  Virginian,  several  chapters  having  ap 
peared  in  advance  in  magazine  form ;  in  that  of 
Une  Vie,  the  short  stories  being  printed  much  later 
in  a  posthumous  volume.  The  only  practical  pur- 


274  OWEN  WISTER 

pose  for  recalling  here  what  must  be  a  rather 
widely-known  fact  is  that  it  serves  to  prove  that 
Mr.  Wister  belongs  to  that  class  of  story  tellers 
whose  natural  form  is  the  short  story  rather  than 
the  long, — who  see  every  story,  in  the  first  in 
stance,  as  a  single  detached  incident;  and  when 
they  attempt  a  more  sustained  effort,  find  them 
selves  simply  stringing  together  a  series  of  such 
incidents,  upon  just  one  rather  slender  narrative 
thread.  As  it  happens,  The  Virginian  proved 
itself,  in  defiance  of  mathematics,  to  be  consid 
erably  bigger  than  the  sum  of  its  parts.  But 
that,  I  think,  was  due  less  to  a  definite,  carefully 
worked  out  plan  than  to  a  chance  unity  of  ideas 
running  through  all  the  several  segments.  The 
West,  as  a  broad,  free,  stupendous  whole,  had  im 
pressed  Mr.  Wister  mightily,  and  in  a  way  that 
could  not  be  quickly  formulated  or  easily  put  into 
words ;  but  with  each  story,  each  episode,  he  came 
nearer  to  saying  some  part  of  what  was  struggling 
for  utterance.  And  when  all  these  separate  parts 
were  finally  fitted  together  into  a  single  volume,  it 
would  be  interesting  to  know  whether  Mr.  Wister 
himself  was  not  just  a  trifle  surprised  to  find  how 
well  he  had  succeeded  in  expressing  a  number  of 
rather  important  truths. 

If  it  were  not  for  the  danger  of  being  misun 
derstood  as  praising  The  Virginian  for  qualities 
which  it  does  not  possess,  the  simplest  way  of 


OWEN  WISTER  215 

defining  its  character  and  at  the  same  time  ex 
plaining  why  its  very  looseness  of  construction 
in  some  degree  is  a  help  rather  than  a  hindrance, 
would  be  to  say  that  it  was  of  the  epic  type.  But 
the  term  would  have  to  be  understood  in  a  far 
more  elemental  sense  than  when  applied  to  the 
careful,  almost  architectural  symmetry  of  the 
Zolaesque  method.  The  Virginian  is  epic,  in  so 
far  as  it  shows  us  certain  individual  lives  strug 
gling  to  reach  a  solution  of  problems  equally  vital 
to  the  length  and  breadth  of  the  whole  vast  region 
in  which  they  live;  a  small  group  of  human  be 
ings  trying  to  justify  to  themselves  and  the  world 
at  large  the  fundamental  justice  of  the  rude  moral 
code  that  governs  them.  In  a  stricter  sense  of 
the  word,  The  Virginian  is  not  merely  badly  con 
structed, — it  is  almost  without  structure.  There 
is  not  a  chapter  in  it  that  we  would  willingly 
spare :  but  that  does  not  alter  the  fact  that,  aside 
from  a  few  crucial  scenes,  there  is  scarcely  a 
chapter  whose  excision  would  destroy  the  book's 
essential  unity.  In  other  words,  the  book  is  so 
far  of  the  picaresco  type  that  its  episodes  are 
like  so  many  pearls  on  a  single  thread, — undoubted 
gems  of  their  kind,  but  so  arranged  that  the  re 
moval  of  one  or  more  would  not  leave  a  gap  in 
the  design.  The  Virginian  has  actually  that  lack 
of  deliberate  detail  work  for  which  so  many  critics 
wrongfully  censure  Mr.  Kipling's  Kim.  Yet  if 


276  OWEN  WISTER 

we  are  willing  to  think  for  a  moment  of  the  West, 
that  glorious,  virgin  West  of  earlier  years,  as  a 
sort  of  anthropomorphized  heroine,  just  as  we 
think  of  India  as  the  heroine  of  Kim, — then  it  be 
comes  possible  to  forgive  much  of  the  looseness, 
the  apparent  irrelevancy,  the  digressions,  because 
much  that  is  either  superfluous  or  beside  the  mark, 
so  far  as  it  is  meant  to  help  us  understand  the 
individual  lives  of  Mollie  or  the  Virginian,  Steve 
or  Trampas,  becomes  fraught  with  a  new  import 
when  our  interest  is  focused  on  the  destiny  of  a 
community,  almost  on  a  nation. 

This  bigger  view  of  The  Virginian  is  of  course 
the  true  one.  The  individual  life  of  any  one  cow- 
puncher,  of  no  matter  how  much  instinctive  and 
inborn  honesty  and  courage  and  deference  to 
women,  is  not  for  its  own  sake  alone  material  fine 
enough  or  strong  enough  from  which  to  fashion 
a  novel  that  could  have  taken  the  firm  hold  upon 
the  general  public,  from  the  Atlantic  to  the  Pa 
cific,  that  The  Virginian  indisputably  has  taken. 
However  lovable  Mr.  Wister's  rough  diamond  of 
the  ranches  may  be,  and  however  sympathetically 
romantic  his  courtship  of  the  demure  little  school 
teacher  with  a  New  England  conscience,  these 
ingredients  alone  would  not  have  kept  the  book 
alive  throughout  the  first  six  months.  The  secret 
of  its  enduring  hold  upon  the  public  must  be 
sought  in  something  deeper  and  more  vital. 


OWEN  WISTER  277 

We  find  the  answer,  I  think,  in  the  broad,  gen 
eral  principle,  expressed  here  and  there  in  words, 
and  throughout  the  book  by  implication,  that  in 
every  community  men  must  make  such  laws  for 
themselves  as  the  conditions  under  which  they  live 
demand.  The  trick  of  "  getting  the  drop  "  on 
your  adversary,  the  right  to  shoot  an  enemy  at 
sight  after  a  fair  warning,  the  whole  underlying 
theory  of  vigilance  committees  and  of  lynch  law, 
are  justified  only  by  the  exigencies  of  special  con 
ditions,  the  advantage  of  the  crudest  and  most 
rudimentary  form  of  justice  over  no  justice  at  all. 
Mr.  Wister  has  not  the  least  intention  of  holding 
lawlessness  up  for  our  admiration,  just  because  it 
comes  in  picturesque  masquerade.  When  the  Vir 
ginian  co-operates  in  a  murder,  according  to 
our  Eastern  standards,  by  helping  to  lynch  his 
personal  friend,  Steve;  and  when  again  he  puts 
himself  upon  a  level  with  a  skulking  outlaw  like 
Trampas,  accepts  his  challenge  to  shoot  at  sight, 
and  succeeds  in  shooting  straighter,  Mr.  Wister 
is  not  proclaiming  the  frontier  code  of  Wyoming 
to  have  been  superior  to  the  English  common  law. 
He  is  simply  insisting  that  if  you  or  I  are  going 
to  live  in  a  community,  we  must  accept  the  ethics 
of  that  community  if  we  wish  to  be  respected.  He 
is  exalting  the  hackneyed  proverb  about  doing  in 
Rome  as  the  Romans  do,  from  mere  expediency,  a 
mere  courteous  wish  to  do  the  expected  thing,  into 


278  OWEN  WISTER 

a  big  fundamental  principle  of  human  rights  and 
duties.  And  when  Mollie's  New  England  con 
science  "  capitulates  to  love,"  and  when,  after 
swearing  she  will  never  forgive  the  Virginian  if  he 
kills  Trampas,  she  exclaims  "  Thank  God ! "  at 
the  sight  of  Trampas's  dead  body,  Mr.  Wister  is 
not  to  be  misunderstood  as  claiming  that  Molly's 
moral  nature  has  undergone  a  change,  and  that  if 
she  returned  to  her  New  England  home,  she  would 
take  with  her  a  strain  of  newly  acquired  lawless 
ness.  What  he  does  teach  is  that  she  has  acquired 
a  wider  horizon,  a  broader  view  of  life;  that  she 
has  suddenly  been  made  to  see  that  right  and 
wrong  are  sometimes  relative  terms,  and  that  what 
is  a  penal  offense  in  Massachusetts  may  be  the 
truest  heroism  among  the  Rockies. 

This  same  broad  principle,  that  every  com 
munity,  whether  large  or  small,  rude  or  cultured, 
knows  better  than  any  outsider  can  know  its  own 
interests  and  necessities,  forms  the  corner-stone  of 
Mr.  Wister's  best  short  story,  Philosophy  Four. 
And  partly  because  it  is  his  best  short  story ; 
partly  because  it  is  replete  with  a  far-sighted 
wisdom;  partly  also  because  it  is  in  a  class  by 
itself,  unique  and  inimitable,  it  has  seemed  worth 
while  to  give  it  in  the  present  analysis  of  Mr. 
Wister's  writings  an  amount  of  space  that  to  some 
readers  may  seem  out  of  proportion  to  its  size  and 
scope. 


OWEN  WISTER  279 

There  are  many  worthy  persons  who  cherish 
the  delusion  that  the  percentages  marked  by  sol 
emn  professors  upon  examination  books  are  a  fair 
criterion  of  the  practical  good  which  a  student 
is  obtaining  from  his  college  course,  and  that 
his  precise  standing  in  the  graduating  class  is  a 
reliable  gauge  of  his  future  chances  of  success  or 
failure.  They  are  not  aware  that  they  are  judg 
ing  life  from  the  standpoint  of  that  venerable  but 
somewhat  misleading  fable  of  "  The  Hare  and  the 
Tortoise  " ;  and  because  some  human  hares  have 
loitered  by  the  wayside,  and  some  human  tortoises, 
dull,  plodding  and  industrious,  have  come  in 
ahead,  they  take  the  result  as  a  measure  of  rela 
tive  speed  throughout  life.  The  undergraduate 
world  makes  no  such  blunders, — and  Mr.  Wister, 
always  felicitous  in  his  subtle  understanding  of 
worlds  and  environments  to  which  he  bears  the 
relation  of  an  outsider,  was  never  more  delight 
fully,  more  triumphantly  successful  than  in  this 
tour  de  force  in  which  he  bridged  the  years  that 
separated  him  from  his  own  Harvard  days,  and 
reflected  the  spirit  of  the  time  and  place  as  only 
a  Harvard  man  of  the  early  eighties  could  have 
known  and  felt  it.  But  it  would  not  be  fair  to 
imply  that  the  merit  of  Philosophy  Four  is  mainly 
local  or  temporal.  In  all  the  larger  universities 
there  are  in  every  class  certain  students  who  are 
recognized  as  born  leaders.  In  class  politics,  in 


280  OWEN  WISTER 

athletics,  in  college  journalism,  in  all  that  gives 
undergraduate  life  cohesion  and  unity,  they  come 
to  the  front.  In  the  older  New  England  universi 
ties  they  belong  largely  to  the  number  of  those 
whose  fathers  and  grandfathers  before  them  were 
prominent  in  the  social  life  of  their  respective 
classes,  and  whose  family  names  figure  prominently 
in  the  pages  of  early  American  history.  To  such 
as  these,  a  four  years'  course  at  Yale  or  Harvard 
is  enveloped  in  a  maze  of  traditions  undreamed  of 
by  the  stranger  and  the  alien.  The  University  is 
not  merely  a  seat  of  learning  from  which  the 
maximum  of  knowledge  must  be  extracted  at  a 
definite  rate  per  day ;  it  is  a  miniature  world  in 
which  they  are  to  find  their  level,  just  as  they 
must  find  it  later  in  the  bigger  world, — and  they 
are  quite  as  much  interested  in  finding  out  what 
their  fellow  classmates  think  of  them  as  they  are 
in  winning  the  approval  of  the  dean  and  faculty. 
And  in  the  long  run,  the  verdict  of  the  under 
graduate  world  is  not  greatly  at  variance  with 
the  later  verdict  of  the  world  at  large. 

In  other  words,  Philosophy  Four,  in  spite  of  its 
joyously  irresponsible  mood,  emphatically  points 
a  moral, — although,  it  may  be,  in  a  somewhat 
topsy-turvy  manner.  And  incidentally,  it  reflects 
undergraduate  life  with  such  fidelity  that  no  Har 
vard  man  of  twenty-five  years'  standing  can  read 
it  without  experiencing  successive  waves  of 


OWEN  WISTER  281 

nostalgia.  With  the  opening  sentence,  it  projects 
us  at  once  into  the  sultry  atmosphere  of  examina 
tion  week,  with  all  its  unforgotten  sights  and 
sounds  and  odors, — the  fragrance  of  early  June 
flowers  wafted  in  at  the  windows,  the  lazy  droning 
of  ponderous  beetles,  blundering  into  the  students' 
lamps,  the  distant  singing  of  the  Glee  Club  borne 
in  from  the  steps  of  a  dormitory  across  the  Yard. 
Within  the  room  two  anxious,  perspiring  students, 
Bertie  and  Billy,  are  being  prepared  for  an  im 
minent  examination  in  Philosophy  Four,  by  a  fel 
low  classmate,  whose  name  alone  is  a  fairly  suffi 
cient  characterization  of  race  and  attributes, 
Oscar  Maironi, — at  the  exorbitant  sum  of  five  dol 
lars  an  hour.  Bertie  and  Billy  are  of  the  type 
of  the  Grasshopper,  in  La  Fontaine's  familiar 
fable ;  throughout  the  season  of  plenty  they  have 
played  and  sung,  oblivious  of  fate  approaching  in 
the  form  of  the  Greek  philosophers ;  but  suddenly 
the  very  names  of  Aristotle  and  Plato,  Epicharmos 
of  Cos,  send  cold  chills  down  their  backs,  and 
they  hastily  seek  out  Maironi,  the  human  Ant, 
and  pre-empt  a  share  of  his  stored-up  knowledge. 

Now  Maironi  is  a  type  of  student  that  will  be 
readily  recognized.  He  is  of  the  tortoise  type, 
patient,  plodding,  bound  ultimately  to  attain  his 
goal,  because  a  certain  number  of  steps  make 
a  furlong,  and  a  definite  number  of  furlongs 
make  a  mile.  His  retentive  memory  absorbs  the 


282  OWEN  WISTER 

words  of  professorial  wisdom,  after  the  fashion 
of  a  sponge;  and  when  examination  day  comes, 
sponge-like,  he  will  squeeze  it  back  again,  some 
what  muddier  and  somewhat  more  scanty  than 
when  he  received  it,  yet  essentially  the  same  and 
without  an  added  drop  of  originality.  Over  the 
two  irresponsible  spirits,  Billy  and  Bertie,  Oscar 
labors  faithfully,  sadly  bewildered  and  somewhat 
pained  by  their  lack  of  reverence  for  the  sages  of 
antiquity,  understanding  only  vaguely  the  rapid 
fire  of  their  chaff  and  their  slang,  but  allowing 
himself  no  protest  beyond  a  mildly  sarcastic  ref 
erence  to  their  "  original  research."  By  seven 
o'clock  on  Monday  evening  they  have  "  salted 
down  the  early  Greek  bucks";  by  midnight  they 
have  "  called  the  turn  on  Plato  " ;  Tuesday  night 
brings  them  down  to  the  Multiplicity  of  the  Ego. 
The  examination  is  set  for  Thursday.  Accord 
ingly,  Wednesday  is  dedicated  to  a  general  last 
survey  of  the  whole  subject.  As  it  happens, 
Wednesday  morning  dawns  bright  and  clear,  a 
most  alluring  morning  for  a  wild  and  irresponsible 
break  for  liberty.  The  open  country  beyond  the 
Charles  calls  to  them  irresistibly.  There  is,  be 
sides,  a  sort  of  tradition,  that  somewhere  in  the 
direction  of  Quincy  there  is  a  wonderful  old  tav 
ern,  a  mysterious,  elusive,  will-o'-the-wisp  sort  of 
place  called  the  Bird-Jn-Hand,  where  marvelous 
dinners  and  still  more  fabulous  wines  could  be  ob- 


OWEN  WISTER  283 

tained,  if  only  one  could  find  the  place.  "  Have 
you  any  sand? "  Bertie  inquires  of  Billy. 
"  Sand ! "  Billy  yells  in  response ;  and  within 
twenty  minutes  they  are  driving1  rapidly  in  the 
direction  of  Quincy,  leaving  Oscar  in  the  lurch. 
And  at  this  point  Mr.  Wister  subtly  explains : 

You  see,  it  was  Oscar  that  had  made  them  run  so, 
or  rather  it  was  Duty  and  Fate  walking  in  Oscar's 
displeasing  likeness.  Nothing  easier,  nothing  more 
reasonable  than  to  see  the  tutor  and  tell  him  that  they 
should  not  need  him  to-day.  But  that  would  have 
spoiled  everything.  They  did  not  know  it,  but  deep 
in  their  childlike  hearts  was  a  delicious  sense  that  in 
thus  unaccountably  disappearing  they  had  won  a 
great  game,  had  got  away  ahead  of  Duty  and  Fate. 

It  was  a  wild  and  exhilarating  day  that  Bertie 
and  Billy  spent  in  pursuit  of  the  elusive  Bird-in- 
Hand.  They  cooled  themselves  with  a  swim  in 
the  Charles ;  they  lay  on  the  bank  and  shouted  at 
each  other  questions  from  Greek  philosophy,  turn 
ing  it  into  a  game  by  agreeing  that  each  should 
credit  himself  with  twenty-five  cents  whenever  the 
other  failed  to  answer  correctly ;  and  finally,  when 
daylight  was  fading  into  dusk,  they  stumbled  un 
expectedly  upon  the  long-sought  tavern,  thanks 
to  the  timely  shying  of  their  horse;  enjoyed  an 
opulent  repast,  in  which  "  silver  fizz  "  played  a 


OWEN  WISTER 

conspicuous  part;  lost  all  conception  of  time  and 
place,  and  drove  homeward  by  the  waning  light 
of  the  moon  in  such  an  exhilarated  condition  that 
when  Billy  inadvertently  tumbled  out  of  the  wagon 
over  the  wheel,  he  had  barely  energy  enough  re 
maining  to  inquire  who  had  fallen,  and  when  told, 
to  add  in  plaintive  cadence,  "  Did  Billy  fall  out  ? 
Poor  Billy!" 

Now,  by  all  the  laws  of  probability  a  night  like 
this  should  have  paved  the  way  for  a  first-class 
failure  in  Philosophy  Four,  but  it  did  nothing  of 
the  sort.  Oscar,  who  had  spent  the  previous  day 
in  calling,  with  business-like  punctuality,  once  an 
hour  at  their  room  and  leaving  memoranda  to  the 
effect  that  his  services  had  been  duly  tendered, 
plodded  through  the  three  hours'  examination 
with  his  wonted  laborious  fidelity, — and  received 
a  modest  seventy-five  per  cent,  as  a  reward  for 
answering  the  Professor's  questions  in  the  Pro 
fessor's  own  words.  But  Billy's  mark  was  eighty- 
six,  and  Bertie's  ninety ;  and  they  were  both  highly 
complimented  by  the  Professor — Bertie  for  his 
discussion  of  the  double  personality  and  his  apt 
illustration  of  the  intoxicated  hack  driver  who  had 
fallen  from  his  hack  and  inquired  who  had  fallen, 
and  then  had  pitied  himself;  and  Billy  for  his 
striking  and  independent  suggestions  concerning 
the  distortions  of  time  and  space  which  hashish 
and  other  drugs  produce.  But  the  crowning  touch 


OWEN  WISTER  285 

of  irony  is  attained  in  Oscar's  unbounded  astonish 
ment,  his  inability  to  understand: 

He  hastened  to  the  Professor  with  his  tale. 
"  There  is  no  mistake/'  said  the  Professor.  Oscar 
smiled  with  increased  deference.  "  But/'  he  urged, 
"  I  assure  you,  sir,  those  young  men  knew  absolutely 
nothing.  I  was  their  tutor  and  they  knew  nothing  at 
all.  I  taught  them  all  their  information  myself." 
"  In  that  case/'  replied  the  Professor,  not  pleased 
with  Oscar's  tale-bearing,  "  you  must  have  given  them 
more  than  you  could  spare.  Good-morning." 

Before  proceeding  to  point  out  that  Lady 
Baltimore,  Mr.  Wister's  next  volume  in  point  of 
time,  is  in  spite  of  all  the  obvious  differences  of 
subject,  setting  and  workmanship,  essentially  the 
product  of  the  same  mind,  the  same  philosophy, 
the  same  outlook  upon  life,  it  is  necessary  to  clear 
up  one  or  two  possible  misunderstandings  regard 
ing  certain  terms  used  in  this  chapter.  There  is, 
for  instance,  the  statement  that  The  Virginian  is 
Mr.  Wister's  only  sustained  effort,  his  one  full- 
length  novel, — and  to  offset  it  is  the  indisputable 
fact  that  Lady  Baltimore  is  issued  in  the  conven 
tional  novel  form,  and  contains  upward  of  four  hun 
dred  pages.  Now  to  suggest  that  broad  margins 
and  large  type  are  potent  factors  in  lending  a  de 
ceptive  impression  of  amplitude  is  merely  to  quib 
ble  over  non-essentials.  The  difference  between 


286  OWEN  WISTER 

a  short  story  and  a  novel  lies  deeper  than  a  mere 
choice  between  eight-  and  ten-point  type.  The 
Virginian,  curtailed  and  compressed  into  fifty 
pages,  would  still  be  a  novel,  because  of  the  seri 
ous  purpose  and  the  tremendous  human  truths  be 
hind  it.  Lady  Baltimore,  regardless  of  mathe 
matical  dimensions,  can  never  be  in  spirit  any 
thing  more  than  an  amplified  novelette, — exquisite 
in  workmanship,  perennially  charming  in  its  pre 
sentment  of  an  exotic  and  evanescent  civilization, 
yet  containing  little  in  the  way  of  broad  gener 
alities  or  of  serious,  practical  philosophy.  Never 
theless,  there  is  the  further  important  truth  that 
technically  Lady  Baltimore  is  the  most  admirable 
artistry,  the  most  nearly  flawless  piece  of  work  that 
Mr.  Wister  has  yet  achieved. 

Every  conservative  critic  must  deplore  the  rash 
extravagance  of  a  certain  type  of  reviewer  who 
finds  in  the  passing  novel  of  to-day  qualities 
worthy  of  comparison  with  Fielding  and  Thack 
eray,  Balzac  and  Flaubert  and  Daudet.  Even  in 
Mr.  Wister's  case  it  is  at  least  over-generous  to 
pronounce  him,  within  the  limits  of  a  single  re 
view,  a  worthy  successor  both  of  Meredith  and  of 
Henry  James.  Yet  this  is  precisely  what  Mr.  Ed 
ward  Clark  Marsh,  a  critic  characterized  equally 
by  the  modesty  and  the  discernment  of  his  judg 
ment,  has  done,  at  least  by  implication,  in  a 
review  of  Lady  Baltimore.  A  possible  indebted- 


OWEN  WISTER  287 

ness  to  the  author  of  The  Egoist  we  may  well  let 
pass ;  considering  how  few  novelists  ever  learn 
just  where  or  how  to  begin  or  end  a  story,  it  is 
quite  natural  to  attribute  to  the  few  who  show 
intelligence  in  this  respect  a  conscious  imitation 
of  one  of  the  acknowledged  masters.  The  influ 
ence  of  Henry  James  is  a  very  different  matter. 
In  acknowledging  his  indebtedness  to  the  author 
of  What  Maisie  Knew,  in  the  preface  already 
quoted,  Mr.  Wister  goes  on  to  say  that  he  once 
had  the  privilege  of  going  over  one  of  his  own 
books  with  Mr.  James,  and  of  having  the  latter 
point  out,  page  by  page,  his  short-comings,  his 
lost  opportunities,  his  lack  of  that  finished  tech 
nique,  without  which  no  amount  of  native  genius 
can  reach  artistic  perfection.  Mr.  Wister  does 
not  state  which  of  his  volumes  was  thus  criticised ; 
but  one  does  not  feel  much  diffidence  in  venturing 
the  conjecture  that  it  was  The  Virginian,  and  that 
Lady  Baltimore  was  Mr.  Wister's  prompt  ac 
knowledgment  of  his  indebtedness,  as  well  as  a 
demonstration  of  his  surprising  aptness  as  a  pupil. 
For  this  reason  it  is  worth  while  to  call  attention 
to  the  critical  acumen  of  Mr.  Marsh's  comment, 
anticipating  as  it  did  by  five  years  Mr.  Wister's 
confession : 

If  there  is  a  remote  suggestion  of  Meredith  in  the 
elegant  leisure  of  his  beginning,  there  is  a  closer  ref- 


288  OWEN  WISTER 

erence, — a  conscious  indebtedness,  indeed,  I  believe — 
to  Henry  James  in  his  manner,  the  turn  of  his  phrases, 
and  even  in  the  framework  and  articulation  of  his 
story. 

All  this  is  perfectly  true ;  and  the  extraordinary 
thing  about  it  is  that,  while  in  everything  except 
ing  the  sheer  craftsmanship  of  writing  Mr.  Wister 
has  followed  his  usual  methods,  there  is  nothing 
in  the  earlier  volumes  to  show  that  Henry  James 
ever  before  influenced  him.  In  many  respects,  no 
doubt,  their  two  minds  must  work  in  much  the 
same  manner,  or  Mr.  Wister  could  never  have 
found  himself  so  quickly  in  sympathy  with  the 
veteran  artist's  technical  methods;  but,  so  far  as 
the  outsider  can  discover,  their  newly  revealed  kin 
ship  is  a  matter  of  those  more  obvious  questions 
of  plot  construction,  point  of  view,  the  grouping 
of  paragraphs  or  the  turn  of  a  phrase.  Accord 
ingly,  let  us  see  first  of  all  of  what  substance  Lady 
Baltimore  is  made;  and  secondly,  in  what  fashion 
and  with  what  new  manipulations  Mr.  Wister  has 
chosen  to  mold  that  substance.  As  all  readers 
of  The  Virgmian  are  aware,  its  author  has  always 
insisted  that  although  its  pages  contain  no  fa 
mous  characters,  and  its  date  is  so  recent  as  to  be 
practically  contemporary,  it  is  nevertheless  a  his 
torical  novel,  a  record  of  a  certain  phase  of 
American  history  caught  and  preserved  during 


OWEN  WISTER  289 

the  actual  making.  In  the  same  sense  both  Phi 
losophy  Four  and  Lady  Baltimore  are  historical 
documents,  representing  eternal  truths  of  human 
nature  as  reacted  upon  by  transitory  conditions. 
The  setting  of  Lady  Baltimore  is  a  certain  town 
of  King's  Port,  a  quiet  backwater  in  the  current 
of  Southern  social  life,  where  old-time  manners  and 
customs  still  linger;  and  there  is  a  fragrance  of 
gentle  dignity  and  bygone  courtliness  in  the  ordi 
nary  relations  of  life.  Perhaps  no  story  ever 
made  claim  to  serious  consideration  while  resting 
upon  so  fragile  a  foundation.  Lady  Baltimore  is 
a  local  Southern  name  for  a  certain  rare  and  glori 
fied  species  of  cake, — and  the  cake  itself  could  not 
be  of  more  airy  and  delicate  consistence  than  the 
story  it  is  here  called  upon  to  sustain.  Imagine 
a  Northerner  plunged  by  certain  whims  of  destiny, 
— the  details  are  immaterial, — into  this  tranquil 
eddy  of  an  alien  civilization,  of  whose  social  code 
he  is  utterly  ignorant;  imagine  him,  while  taking 
luncheon  in  the  one  available  cake-and-tea  room 
of  the  town,  witnessing  the  purchase  of  a  Lady 
Baltimore  cake  by  a  much  embarrassed  young 
man,  who  admits  to  the  equally  self-conscious 
young  woman  behind  the  counter  that  this  cake, 
ordered  for  a  day  near  at  hand,  is  to  serve  at  his 
wedding.  In  the  embarrassment  of  the  young  man, 
theNortherner  scents  something  unusual  in  the  way 
of  romance ;  and  little  by  little  he  gleans  the  facts, 


290  OWEN  WISTER 

and  pieces  them  together.  The  young  man,  it 
seems,  has  committed  an  act  which  his  family  and 
friends  choose  to  regard  as  suicidal, — he  has  en 
gaged  himself  to  a  young  woman  of  whose  pedigree 
they  know  little  or  nothing;  she  may  be  a  very 
worthy  girl,  but  she  is  not  one  of  them,  she  does 
not  belong  to  the  Southern  aristocracy,  she  is  not 
a  part  and  parcel  of  King's  Port. 

Such  in  brief  is  the  opening  situation  of  Lady 
Baltimore.  To  give  an  adequate  idea  of  the  way 
in  which  the  unyielding,  indomitable  force  of  lo 
cal  prejudice  is  brought  to  bear  upon  this  young 
couple;  how  gossip  twists  and  distorts  and  plays 
havoc  with  the  actualities  of  the  case;  and  how  a 
number  of  destinies  are  forced  out  of  their  natural 
channels  by  the  dead  inertia  of  traditional,  social 
laws:  would  mean  nothing  less  than  to  rewrite 
Lady  Baltimore,  and  to  spoil  it  in  the  rewriting. 
In  The  Virginian,  Mr.  Wister  succeeded  in  giving 
us  a  thoroughly  virile  book  without  brutalizing  it ; 
in  Lady  Baltimore,  he  has  achieved  the  harder 
task  of  producing  a  delightfully  feminine  book 
without  stooping  to  effeminacy.  Or,  to  put  it  in 
another  way,  he  has  juggled  dexterously  with 
soap-bubbles  without  breaking  them  in  the  process. 

It  remains  to  speak  only  of  the  technique  of 
Lady  Baltimore.  It  is  no  new  thing  to  find  Mr. 
Wister  writing  in  the  first  person.  But  it  is  dis 
tinctly  new  to  find  him  rigidly  confining  himself 


OWEN  WISTER  291 

to  that  narrow  segment  of  life  that  passes  di 
rectly  within  the  angle  of  vision  of  his  spokesman, 
the  Northerner.  This  is  the  Henry  James  trick, 
par  excellence.  Earlier  novelists  have  sometimes 
done  the  same  thing  indifferently  well,  by  instinct 
rather  than  intention ;  but  Mr.  James  was  the  first 
to  reduce  this  method  to  rules.  And  the  ad 
mirable  consistency  with  which  Mr.  Wister  has 
followed  out  this  principle  of  a  single  viewpoint 
not  only  proves  him  to  be  an  apt  pupil  but  makes 
Lady  Baltimore  one  of  those  rare  achievements  in 
American  fiction,  a  piece  of  technique  that  is  al 
most  without  a  flaw. 

It  is  a  regrettable  fact  that  Mr.  Wister,  never 
a  prolific  author,  seems  to  be  writing  with  an  ever 
decreasing  momentum.  It  is  so  long  since  a  new 
volume  has  appeared,  bearing  his  name,  that  there 
is  a  half-hearted  effort  to  hail  as  a  literary  event 
the  recent  appearance  of  Members  of  the  Family, 
in  which  he  has  gathered  together  the  later 
stories  of  the  West  which  from  time  to  time  he 
has  contributed  to  the  magazines.  In  all  candor 
it  must  be  admitted  that  the  majority  of  them  are 
rather  light-weight.  A  few  are  frankly  humor 
ous,  as,  for  instance,  "  Happy-Teeth,"  in  which 
the  easily  aroused  superstition  of  Indians  is  clev 
erly  utilized  to  drive  out  a  new  post-trader  who 
has  acquired  monopoly  through  unfair  means ;  or 
again  "  In  the  Back,"  in  which  a  hasty,  although 


292  OWEN  WISTER 

perhaps  well-merited  kick,  delivered  by  an  army 
captain  to  one  of  his  men,  becomes  the  subject 
of  serious  investigation  and  infinite  red  tape,  and 
is  finally  paid  in  full  with  accumulated  interest. 
But  the  stories  that  deserve  to  be  remembered  are 
"  Timberline  "  and  "  The  Gift  Horse."  Imagine 
yourself  a  tenderfoot,  unskilled  in  the  ways  of  the 
West,  and  without  the  clues  that  would  help  you 
to  read  character.  Imagine  that  you  have  done 
a  kindness  to  a  man  who  is  locally  eyed  askance ; 
and  that  he,  to  mark  his  gratitude,  has  insisted 
upon  lending  you  a  splendid  specimen  of  a  horse 
for  the  season.  It  might  or  it  might  not  strike 
you  as  peculiar  that  before  giving  you  the  horse 
he  should  inquire  so  particularly  as  to  your  plans 
and  get  your  definite  statement  that  you  will  re 
main  throughout  the  summer  on  a  certain  side  of 
a  certain  mountain  range.  Imagine,  furthermore, 
that  you  suddenly  change  your  mind  and  cross 
that  range  in  quest  of  a  certain  legendary  spring 
which  according  to  Indian  tradition  has  a  way 
of  strangely  appearing  and  disappearing.  You 
find  the  spring  and  simultaneously  find  an  in- 
closure  wherein  there  are  many  horses,  stolen 
horses  with  fresh  brands  not  yet  healed;  at  your 
very  feet  lie  a  pile  of  branding  irons ;  and  before 
you  can  collect  your  thoughts  you  are  looking 
into  the  muzzle  of  a  pistol,  and  find  yourself  sur 
rounded  by  a  company  of  ominously  quiet  men, 


OWEN  WISTER  293 

one  of  whom  carries  a  coil  of  hempen  rope.  These 
men  do  not  care  to  listen  to  explanations,  they 
simply  cite  the  significant  fact  that  you  are  here, 
that  the  branding  irons  are  here  and  that  the  horse 
you  ride  is  a  stolen  one.  Such  is  the  awkward  pre 
dicament  narrated  in  "  The  Gift  Horse,"  and  there 
is  a  grim  little  touch  at  the  end  which  completes 
its  artistry.  But  even  stronger  than  this  is  "  Tim- 
berline."  For  sheer  economy  of  means  and  a  steady 
rise  in  dramatic  force  to  the  culminating  tragedy, 
it  stands  as  easily  the  best  story  in  the  collection, 
indeed  one  of  the  best  that  Mr.  Wister  has  ever 
written.  It  is  simply  the  account  of  a  man,  little 
more  than  a  boy,  who,  having  been  the  uninten 
tional  instrument  of  a  murder,  has  accepted  a  bribe 
to  remain  silent,  and  slowly,  inexorably,  has  found 
himself  dragged  back  by  conscience  to  the  scene  of 
the  crime,  forced  under  the  spell  of  an  extraor 
dinary  and  awe-inspiring  convulsion  of  nature  to 
make  confession,  restore  the  money  and  by  his 
spectacular  death  reveal  the  hiding-place  of  the 
other  victim  at  the  bottom  of  a  canon  a  thousand 
feet  below.  An  old  idea,  elemental  in  its  simplicity 
— but,  like  many  of  the  world's  big  stories,  owing 
its  value  to  a  finished  workmanship,  an  unerring  in 
stinct  for  telling  neither  too  much  nor  too  little. 
In  his  earlier  work,  as  we  have  already  seen,  Mr. 
Wister  cared  little  about  the  rules  of  form;  his 
strength  lay  in  his  ability  to  hold  the  attention, 


294  OWEN  WISTER 

whether  he  shortened  up  a  story  or  unduly  pro 
longed  it.  In  other  words,  he  told  his  stories  in 
a  certain  form,  not  because  it  was  the  best  form, 
but  because  it  happened  for  the  moment  to  be 
his  form,  the  form  that  came  instinctively.  The 
most  interesting  thing  about  this  new  volume  is 
that  it  shows  that  he  is  continuing  to  practise,  as 
he  first  learned  to  do  in  Lady  Baltimore,  a  more 
careful,  more  conscious  method  of  construction. 
Mr.  Wister  has  possessed  from  the  first  the  valu 
able  assets  of  sincerity,  force  and  broad,  popular 
appeal.  And  above  all  he  has  always  had  some 
thing  to  say  that  was  eminently  worth  the  say 
ing.  Now  that  he  has  added  to  these  qualities 
a  finer  artistry,  it  is  to  be  hoped  that  his  lessened 
productiveness  is  not  due  to  an  impoverished  soil, 
but  to  a  wise  economy  that  deliberately  lets  land 
lie  for  a  season  fallow. 


FRANK  NORRIS 


IT  is  barely  a  decade  since  Frank  Norris  was 
putting  the  final  touches  to  the  volume  which  was 
destined  to  be  his  last  novel,  and  clarifying  his 
ideas  upon  literature  and  life  in  a  series  of  essays 
entitled  "  Salt  and  Sincerity."  There  have  been 
so  many  changes  in  American  fiction  during  these 
intervening  ten  years ;  so  many  younger  reputa 
tions  have  waxed  and  waned,  that  the  work  of 
Norris,  taken  as  a  whole,  has  been  thrown  into  an 
unjust  and  misleading  remoteness.  We  are  apt 
to  think  of  him  as  belonging  to  a  bygone  genera 
tion,  as  an  influence  which  after  showing  a  brief 
potentiality  suddenly  withered  once  and  for  all. 
As  a  matter  of  fact,  Norris's  influence  has  never 
for  an  hour  been  dead.  In  a  quiet,  persistent  way, 
it  has  spread  and  strengthened,  leavening  all  un- 
suspectedly  the  maturer  work  of  many  of  the 
writers  who  have  since  come  into  prominence.  And 
the  best  way  in  which  to  realize  the  nearness  of 
Norris,  in  point  of  time  and  of  spirit  as  well  as 
the  dormant  strength  which  his  early  death  pre 
vented  from  ever  fully  awakening,  is  to  glance 
back  and  briefly  consider  some  of  the  conditions 
295 


296  FRANK  NORRIS 

of  American  fiction  at  the  time  when  he  began 
to  write. 

During  the  closing  years  of  the  nineteenth  cen 
tury,  or  to  be  more  specific,  from  1897  to  1902, 
the  period  of  Norris's  activity,  there  were  easily 
a  score  of  new  writers  who  leaped  suddenly  into 
prominence  on  the  strength  of  a  single  book.  The 
volumes  that  come  casually  to  mind  and  may  be 
regarded  as  fairly  representative  are  Winston 
Churchill's  Richard  Carvel,  Robert  Herrick's  Gos 
pel  of  Freedom,  Mrs.  Wharton's  The  Greater 
Inclination,  Booth  Tarkington's  Gentleman  from 
Indiana,  Brand  Whitlock's  Thirteenth  District, 
George  Horton's  Long  Straight  Road,  Theodore 
Dreiser's  Sister  Carrie,  Morgan  Robertson's  Spun 
Yarn,  Harry  Leon  Wilson's  The  Spenders,  Owen 
Wister's  The  Virginian,  Jack  London's  Son  of  the 
Wolf, — the  list  might  be  stretched  to  twice 
the  length.  In  glancing  over  this  array  of 
names,  the  various  associations  and  contrasts  they 
offer  strike  one  to-day  as  exceedingly  odd.  Cer 
tain  of  these  reputations  seem  now  curiously 
stunted;  certain  others  loom  up  unexpectedly 
large;  but  in  spite  of  the  unforeseen  readjust 
ments  that  time  has  wrought,  the  significant  fact 
remains  that  Norris  in  his  lifetime  dwarfed  them 
all.  At  the  time  of  the  appearance  of  The  Octopus 
and  The  Pit,  there  was  not  a  single  volume  pro 
duced  by  this  younger  group,  with  the  possible 


FRANK  NORRIS  297 

<* 

exception  of  The  Virginian,  that  even  approached 
them  in  breadth  of  view  or  bigness  of  intent.  And 
when  we  measure  the  ten  years'  growth  in  indi 
vidual  cases,  when  we  compare  the  promise  of  The 
Gospel  of  Freedom  or  The  Greater  Inclination 
with  the  accomplishment  of  Together  or  The 
House  of  Mirth,  then  the  fact  is  suddenly  forced 
home  to  us,  how  much  greater  growth  that  same 
ten  years  would  have  shown  in  the  best  craftsman 
and  the  bravest,  biggest  soul  of  them  all.  One 
realizes  now  that  even  in  his  last  and  maturest 
books,  Norris  had  not  fully  found  himself,  that 
he  was  still  in  the  transition  period,  still  groping 
his  way  tirelessly,  undauntedly  towards  self- 
knowledge.  (He  had  adopted  the  creed  of  nat 
uralism  ardentlyy  refashioning  it  to  suit  the  needs 
of  a  younger,  cleaner  civilization,  a  world  of 
wider  expanses,  purer  air,  freer  life.  And  even 
while  he  wrought,  he  witnessed  the  apparent  down 
fall  of  that  very  creed  in  the  land  of  its  birth,  saw 
its  disintegration  beneath  the  hands  of  its  chief 
champion.  y\[t  is  impossible  to  read  Norris's  works 
without  perceiving  that  from  first  to  last  there  was 
within  him  an  instinct  continually  at  war  with  his 
chosen  realistic  methods ;  an  unconquerable  and 
exasperating  vein  of  romanticism  that  led  him 
frequently  into  palpable  absurdities^ — not  because 
romanticism  in  itself  is  a  literary  «rime,  but  be 
cause  it  has  its  own  proper  place  in  literature,  and 


298  FRANK  NORRIS 

that  place  is  assuredly  not  in  a  realistic  novel. 
How  this  inner  warfare  would  eventually  have 
worked  out ;  what  compromises,  innovations,  icono- 
'clasms  would  have  paved  the  way  to  full  maturity 
of  accomplishment,  it  is  of  course  impossible  now 
even  to  guess.  But  one  thing  is  certain:  Norris 
would  have  found  that  way;  and  when  found,  it 
would  have  proved  not  merely  big,  rugged,  com 
pelling,  but  also  clean  as  the  open,  wind-swept 
spaces  that  he  loved,  and  fine  as  gold  that  has  no 
dross. 

The  expressed  views  of  any  novelist  on  the  prin 
ciples  of  his  art  have  a  value  far  out  of  propor 
tion  to  their  critical  acumen.  We  may  agree  or 
not  with  Marion  Crawford's  The  Novel,  What  It 
Is,  or  with  Maupassant's  preface  to  Pierre  et 
Jean,  with  Zola's  Roman  Experiment  ale  or  TJie 
Art  of  Fiction,  by  Henry  James;  their  principles 
may  be  quite  right  or  quite  wrong ;  the  important 
fact  in  each  case  is  that  they  have  betrayed  to 
us  the  principles  in  accordance  with  which  they 
themselves  wrought.  They  have  given  us  pene 
trating  searchlights  into  the  secrets  of  their 
methods,  the  sources  of  their  strength  and  their 
weakness.  This  is  why,  in  a  critical  examination 
of  the  writings  of  Frank  Norris,  his  collected  es 
says  entitled  The  Responsibilities  of  the  Novelist 
not  only  cannot  be  ignored  but  form  the  natural 
and  obvious  starting-point. 


FRANK  NORRIS  299 

It  is  well  to  add  quickly  that  these  essays  will 
serve  merely  as  a  starting-point  and  nothing1  more. 
If  they  were  the  measure  of  Norris's  value,  if 
they  represented  not  only  what  Norris  believed 
that  he  was  trying  to  do  but  what  he  actually  suc 
ceeded  in  doing,  he  would  be  of  considerably  lesser 
magnitude  and  his  influence  would  have  ended  long 
before  this.  They  are  exceedingly  uneven,  some 
of  them  revealing  a  surprisingly  deep  and  far- 
reaching  understanding  of  the  methods  and  pur 
poses  of  serious  fiction,  while  others  again  show 
nothing  excepting  certain  curious  personal  limi 
tations,  a  sort  of  mental  astigmatism.  In  a  num 
ber  of  them,  such  as  "  A  Problem  in  Fiction,"  one 
feels  that  Norris  was  not  so  much  telling  the 
general  public  the  views  that  he  had  long  and 
clearly  held,  but  rather  that  he  was  making  in 
teresting  exploration  trips  into  his  own  mind  and 
trying  by  a  tour  de  force  to  reconcile  the  contra 
dictory  instincts  and  impulses  that  he  encoun 
tered  there.  It  may  be  said  in  passing  that  these 
essays  contain  some  curiously  bad  writing  to  come 
from  the  pen  possessing  the  strength  and  bril 
liance  and  lyric  quality  of  Norris  at  his  best.  It 
seems  almost  as  though  he  were  saying:  This  is 
not  my  real  work;  it  is  only  a  side  issue.  I  can 
not  stop  to  worry  about  form  and  style.  All  I 
want  to  do  is  to  convey  the  idea  with  sufficiently 
comprehensible  journalistic  fluency.  I  am  in  a 


300  FRANK  NORRIS 

hurry  to  get  back  to  my  new  big  novel,  the  biggest 
and  the  best  I  have  ever  done !  This  was,  quite  lit 
erally,  Norris's  attitude  towards  fiction  in  general 
and  his  own  in  particular.  The  novel  to  him  was 
the  literary  form  of  supreme  importance,  the  most 
potent  and  far  reaching: 

I  The  Pulpit,  the  Press  and  the  Novel — these  indis 
putably  are  the  great  molders  of  public  opinion  and 
public  morals  to-day.  But  the  Pulpit  speaks  but  once 
a  week;  the  Press  is  read  with  lightning  haste  and 
the  morning  news  is  waste  paper  by  noon.  But  the 
novel  goes  into  the  home  to  stay.  It  is  read  word  for 
word ;  is  talked  about,  discussed ;  its  influence  pene 
trates  every  chink  and  corner  of  the  family.  .  .  . 
How  necessary  it  becomes,  then,  for  those  who,  by  the 
simple  art  of  writing,  can  invade  the  heart's  heart  of 
thousands,  whose  novels  are  received  with  such  meas 
ureless  earnestness — how  necessary  it  becomes  for 
those  who  wield  such  power  to  use  it  rightfully.  Is 
it  not  expedient  to  act  fairly?  Is  it  not,  in  Heaven's 
name,  essential  that  the  People  hear,  not  a  lie,  but  the 
Truth? 

f  Such  was  Norris's  firm  conviction  regarding  the 
motTern  novel:  an  instrument  of  vast  and  at  times 
dangerous  power;  and  the  novelist's  responsibility 
he  looked  upon  as  a  solemn  trust.  He_had  only 
«corn  for  writers  who  shifted  and  spun  around 


like  weather-cocks  to  meet  the  wind  of  popular  fa- 


FRANK  NORRIS  301 

voT|_and  he  insisted  that  the  true  reward  of  the 
novelist,  the  reward  that  could  not  be  taken  away 
from  him,  was  to  be  able  to  say  at  the  close  of 
his  life: 

"  I  never  truckled ;  I  never  took  off  the  hat  to 
Fashion  and  held  it  out  for  pennies.  By  God,  I  told 
them  the  truth.  They  liked  it  or  they  didn't  like  it. 
What  had  that  to  do  with  me?  I  told  them  the  truth; 
I  knew  it  for  the  truth  then,  and  I  know  it  for  the 
truth  now." 


The  essay  on  "  The  Novel  with  a  Purpose  "  is 
the  sanest,  wisest,  most  important  chapter  in  this 
volume.  It  shows  how  thoroughly  Norris  under 
stood  the  principles  of  epic  structure  in  fiction, 
how  faithfully  he  had  learned  the  one  big  lesson 
that  Zola  had  to  teach,  and  how  wisely  he  had 
taken  to  heart  the  warning  contained  in  the  great 
Frenchman's  later  blunders.  The  novelist's  pur 
pose  is  to  his  story  "  what  the  keynote  is  to  the 
sonata.  Though  the  musician  cannot  exaggerate 
the  importance  of  the  keynote,  yet  the  thing  that 
interests  him  is  the  sonata  itself."  In  like  manner 
the  purpose  in  a  novel  is  important  to  the  author 
only  as  a  note  to  which  his  work  must  be  attuned ; 
"  the  moment  that  the  writer  becomes  really  and 
vitally  interested  in  his  purpose  his  novel  fails." 
And  Norris  proceeds  to  illustrate  "  this  strange 


302  FRANK  NORRIS 

anomaly,"  by  imagining  Hardy  writing  a  sort 
of  English  Germinal,  setting  forth  the  wrongs  of 
the  Welsh  coal-miners.  "  It  is  conceivable  that 
he  could  write  a  story  that  would  make  the  blood 
boil  with  indignation.  But  he  himself,  if  he  is  to 
remain  an  artist,  if  he  is  to  write  his  novels  suc 
cessfully,  will,  as  a  novelist,  care  very  little  about 
the  iniquitous  labor  system  of  the  Welsh  coal- 
miners.  It  will  be  to  him  as  impersonal  a  thing 
as  the  key  is  to  the  composer  of  a  sonata."  Now 
all  this  is  absolutely  right;  indeed,  so  simple  and 
elemental  an  axiom  of  structure  that  one  wonders 
why,  at  the  close  of  the  nineteenth  century,  it  was 
still  necessary  to  put  it  into  words  at  all, — why 
it  was  that  even  the  unthinking  general  reader 
could  not  feel  instinctively  the  fatal  inferiority  of 
Mrs.  Humphry  Ward  to  Zola;  the  inferiority, 
for  that  matter,  of  all  of  the  Frenchman's  work 
subsequent  to  Le  Docteur  Pascal  to  almost  all  his 
work  preceding  it.  Yet,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  even 
Norris  himself  did  not  perceive  this  truth  in  its 
fullness  until  after-  the  appearance  of  Fccondite. 
He  had  not  seen  how  far  astray  Zola  had  already 
drifted  in  Paris;  he  did  not  see  that  he  himself,  in 
The  Octopus,  was  being  drawn  into  the  same  dis 
astrous  current.  But  he  did  see  later,  in  time  to 
show  in  The  Pit  the  dawn  of  a  new  light.  And 
that  is  why  the  following  quotation  is  not  merely 
a  reiteration  of  the  point  already  made  about 


FRANK  NORRIS  303 

Hardy  and  the  Welsh  miners  but  has  an  interest 
all  its  own: 

Do  you  think  that  Mrs.  Stowe  was  more  interested 
in  the  slave  question  than  she  was  in  the  writing  of 
Uncle  Tom's  Cabin?  Her  book,  her  manuscript,  the 
page-to-page  progress  of  the  narrative,  were  more  ab 
sorbing  to  her  than  all  the  Negroes  that  were  ever 
whipped  or  sold.  Had  it  not  been  so,  that  great 
purpose-novel  never  would  have  succeeded. 

Consider  the  reverse — Fecondite,  for  instance.  The 
purpose  for  which  Zola  wrote  the  book  ran  away  with 
him.  He  really  did  care  more  for  the  depopulation 
of  France  than  he  did  for  his  novel.  Result — ser 
mons  on  the  fruitfulness  of  women,  special  pleading, 
a  farrago  of  dry,  dull  incidents,  overburdened  and 
collapsing  under  the  weight  of  a  theme  that  should 
have  intruded  only  indirectly. 

It  is  rather  painful  to  turn  from  the  broad 
sanity  of  views  like  these,  views  that  Norris  ar 
rived  at  through  his  intellect,  to  certain  others 
that  he  reached  through  his  emotions, — such,  for 
instance,  as  his  views  upon  romantic  fiction,  f  If 
we  have  ever  had  a  writer  in  this  country  who 
owes  every  last  atom  of  importance  that  is  in 
him  to  the  realistic  creed,  that  writer  is  Frank 
Norris.  And  for  that  reason  it  sounds  like  the 
basest  kind  of  ingratitude  to  find  him  speaking  of 
"  that  harsh,  loveless,  colorless  blunt  tool  called 


304  FRANK  NORRIS 

realism."  The  plain  truth  is  that  Norris  never 
understood  in  any  of  their  accepted  senses  the 
meaning  of  the  terms,  romance  and  realism.  I  At 
the  time  when  A  Man's  Woman  was  still  rumiing 
serially  in  the  San  Francisco  Chronicle  and  the 
New  York  Evening  Sim,  Norris  said  in  a  letter 
to  a  critic  who  had  objected  to  his  "  exasperating 
vein  of  romanticism,"  "  For  my  own  part,  I  be 
lieve  that  the  greatest  realism  is  the  greatest  ro 
manticism  and  I  hope  some  day  to  prove  it."  In 
"  A  Plea  for  Romantic  Fiction,"  he  gave  the  fol 
lowing  topsy-turvy,  irrational,  irresponsible  defi 
nition  : 

Romance,  I  take  it,  is  the  kind  of  fiction  that  takes 
cognizance  of  variations  from  the  type  of  normal  life. 
Realism  is  the  kind  of  fiction  that  confines  itself  to 
the  type  of  normal  life.  According  to  this  definition, 
then,  Romance  may  even  treat  of  the  sordid,  the  un 
lovely — as,  for  instance,  the  novels  of  M.  Zola.  Zola 
has  been  dubbed  a  Realist,  but  he  is,  on  the  contrary, 
the  very  head  of  the  Romanticists. 

Now  Norris  might  just  as  well  have  defined 
White  as  that  pigment  which  we  use  to  paint  the 
rare  and  precious  things  of  life,  and  Black  as  that 
which  we  choose  for  all  common  every-day  things, 
cups  and  saucers,  table  linen,  wheel-barrows  and 
cobble-stones.  Shoe-polish,  he  might  have  added, 
is  generally  considered  black  but  really  it  is  the 


FRANK  NORRIS  305 

most  dazzling  of  all  possible  varieties  of  white. 
This  sort  of  thing  is  definition  run  mad,  arrant 
nonsense  leading  nowhere.     There  are  several  per 
fectly    legitimate    definitions    of    the    two   chief 
creeds  in  fiction,  any  one  of  which  Norris  might 
have  adopted,  any  one  of  which  would  have  been 
intelligible  to  the  public  at  large.     There  is,  for 
instance,  that  very   simple   distinction  drawn  by 
Marion  Crawford/making  realism  a  transcript  of 
life  as  it  i«u  and  romance,  of  life  as  we  would 
like  it  to  be  A  But  Norris  is  right  in  one  thing:  "* 
realism  and  romance  do  exist  side  by  side  every 
where  and  all  the  time.    Where  he  missed  the  truth 
is  in  this:  that  the  difference  between  the  two  is 
not  one  of  material  fact,  of  a  different  series  of 
episodes,  but  simply   of   a   different   attitude   of 
mind.     Two  people  can  look  at  a  sunset,  and  one      / 
of  them  may  say,  "  With  what  magic  trickery  has 
Nature's  brush  decked  out  the  heavens  with  a  new 
and   marvelous   color  scheme !  "     And   the   other 
may  with  equal  right  reply,  "  The  refraction  of 
solar  radiation  through  a  finely  attenuated  aque 
ous  vapor  does  produce  some  rather  pretty  ef 
fects."    You  have  a  perfect  right  to  go  into  rap 
tures  over  the  infinite  power  of  Creation  which 
produced  Niagara  Falls  ;  but  the  man  who  "  didn't 
see    what    prevented    the    water    from    tumbling 
over  "  was  equally  within  his  rights, — and  he  was 
a  pretty  good  realist.    Water  itself  may  be  looked 


306  FRANK  NORRIS 

at  romantically  as  the  god  Neptune,  or  realistic 
ally  as  H2O, — and  if  you  cannot  see  that  the 
chemical  fact  is  the  greater  wonder  of  the  two, 
then  there  is  no  use  in  trying  to  convert  you. 

Frank  Norris  was  of  the  number  of  those  whom 
it  was  hopeless  to  try  to  convert.  He  could  not 
or  would  not  understand  that  while  a  novelist  has 
a  perfect  right  to  look  upon  life  either  literally 
or  imaginatively  he  has  not  the  right  to  do  the 
two  things  simultaneously.  There  is  a  character 
presented  almost  at  the  outset  of  The  Octopus, 
a  poet  by  the  name  of  Presley,  who  admirably 
illustrates  the  chief  shortcoming  of  Norris's  work. 
He  is  haunted  by  the  dream  of  writing  an  Epic  of 
the  West.  His  ambition  is  to  paint  life  frankly 
as  he  sees  it ;  yet,  incongruously  enough,  he  wishes 
to  see  everything  through  a  rose-tinted  mist, — 
a  mist  that  will  tone  down  all  the  harsh  outlines 
and  crude  colors  of  actuality.  He  is  searching 
for  true  romance,  and  instead  finds  himself  con 
tinually  brought  up  against  the  materialism  of 
railway  tracks  and  grain  elevators  and  unjust 
freight  tariffs.  All  this  is  of  interest  to  us,  not 
because  Presley  is  an  especially  important  or  con 
vincing  character,  but  because  he  is  so  obviously 
introduced  as  a  means  of  stating  once  again  the 
author's  topsy-turvy  theory  that  realism  and  ro 
manticism  are  convertible  terms ;  and  that  the  epic 
theme  for  which  Presley  is  vainly  groping  lies 


FRANK  NORRIS  307 

all  the  time  close  at  hand,  could  he  only  see  it, 
not  merely  in  the  primeval  life  of  mountain  and 
of  desert,  the  shimmering  purple  and  gold  of  a 
sunset,  but  in  the  limitless  stretch  of  steel  rails, 
the  thunder  of  passing  trains,  the  whole,  vast,  in 
tricate  mechanism  of  organized  monopoly. 

Now,  of  course,  there  is  an  epic  vastness  and 
power  in  many  phases  of  our  complicated  modern 
life;  and  the  only  possible  way  in  which  to  handle 
them  adequately  is  by  using  a  huge  stretch  of  can 
vas,  and  blocking  them  in  with  broad,  sweeping, 
Zolaesque  brush  strokes.  But  epic  vastness  has 
no  logical  connection  with  romanticism;  its  very 
essence  lies  in  some  huge,  all-pervading,  symbolic 
figure,  some  personified  Idea,  seen  vaguely  in  the 
background,  behind  a  closely-woven  web  of  human 
actualities.  Here  and  there,  it  may  be,  the  seeds 
of  romance  will  take  root  and  spring  up,  in  spite 
of  all  precaution,  like  tares  among  the  wheat, — 
and  they  are  inevitable  in  the  case  of  a  writer  who, 
like  Norris,  has  a  tender  indulgence  for  the  tares. 
This  was  his  pet  failing,  his  besetting  sin, — a  cu 
rious  paradox  when  one  stops  to  consider  how 
wonderfully  clear,  the  greater  part  of  the  time, 
his  vision  was.  He  knew  in  his  inmost  soul  that 
what  counts  most  in  honest  workmanship  is  fidel 
ity  to  life,  the  real,  actual  life  as  it  is  lived  day  by 
day  by  average,  commonplace  human  beings.  "  It 
still  remains  true,"  he  once  wrote,  "  that  all  the 


308  FRANK  NORRIS 

temperament,  all  the  sensitiveness  to  impressions, 
all  the  education  in  the  world  will  not  help  one 
little,  little  bit  in  the  writing  of  a  novel  if  life 
itself,  the  crude,  the  raw,  the  vulgar,  if  you  will, 
is  not  studied." 

And  in  this  respect  he  practised  what  he 
preached,  studying  the  crude,  the  raw,  the  vulgar ; 
doggedly  adhering  to  the  blunt  truth,  never  soft 
ening  or  palliating  a  thought  where  he  conceived 
it  essential  to  the  fidelity  of  his  picture.  Oc 
casionally,  his  very  imagery  verged  upon  coarse 
ness,  as  where  he  described  the  ships  along  the 
city's  water-front,  "  their  flanks  opened,  their  car 
goes,  as  it  were,  their  entrails  spewed  out  in  a 
wild  disarray  of  crate  and  bale  and  box."  And 
what  magic  effects  this  fearlessness  of  words  pro 
duced  ;  how  prodigiously  Norris  succeeded  in  mak 
ing  us  see!  There  have  been  few  novelists  who 
could  vie  with  him  in  the  ability  to  sketch  the 
physiognomy  of  some  mean  little  side-street  in 
San  Francisco,  to  picture  with  a  few  telling 
strokes  some  odd  little  Chinese  restaurant,  to 
make  us  breathe  the  very  atmosphere  of  Mc- 
Teague's  tawdry,  disordered,  creosote-laden  dental 
parlor,  or  the  foul,  reeking  interior  of  Bennett's 
tent  on  the  icefields  of  the  far  North.  And  yet, 
every  now  and  again,  this  same  acute,  clear- 
visioned  writer  would  perversely  sacrifice  not  only 
truth,  but  even  verisimilitude  for  the  sake  of  a 


FRANK  NORRIS  809 

melodramatic  stage  effect,  even  at  the  risk  of  "  an 
anti-climax,  worthy  of  Dickens,"  as  Mr.  Howells 
has  characterized  the  closing  scene  in  McTeague. 
When  a  friend  once  expostulated  with  Norris  for 
the  gross  improbability  of  that  chapter  in  which 
a  murderer,  fleeing  from  justice  into  the  burning 
heat  of  an  alkali  desert,  carries  with  him  a  canary 
that  continues  to  sing  after  thirty-six  hours  with 
out  food  or  water,  he  frankly  admitted  the  ab 
surdity,  but  said  that  he  had  been  unable  to  resist 
the  temptation,  because  the  scene  offered  such  a 
dramatic  contrast.  "  Besides,"  he  added  whim 
sically,  "  I  compromised  by  saying  that  the  ca 
nary  was  half-dead,  anyhow." 

Norris's  debt  to  Zola,  already  referred  to,  is 
too  obvious  to  have  need  of  argument.  Every 
where,  from  his  earliest  writings  to  his  last,  in 
one  form  or  another,  it  stares  us  in  the  face,  com 
pelling  recognition.  Like  Zola,  his  strength  lay 
in  depicting  life  on  a  gigantic  scale,  portraying 
humanity  in  the  mass;  like  Zola,  he  could  not 
work  without  the  big,  underlying  Idea,  the  domi 
nant  symbol.  In  McTeague,  the  symbol  is  Gold, 
the  most  fitting  emblem  he  could  devise  to  per 
sonify  the  State  of  California.  The  whole  book 
is  flooded  with  a  shimmer  of  yellow  light, — we  see 
it  in  the  floating  golden  disk  that  the  sunlight, 
through  the  trees,  casts  upon  the  ground;  in  the 
huge  gilded  tooth  of  the  dentist's  sign ;  in  the  lot- 


310  FRANK  NORRIS 

tery  prize  which  Trina  wins;  in  the  Polish  Jew, 
Zerkow,  "  the  Man  with  the  Rake,  groping  hourly 
in  the  muck  heap  of  the  city  for  gold,  for  gold, 
for  gold  "  ;  in  the  visionary  golden  dishes  of  Maria 
Macapa's  diseased  fancy,  "  a  yellow  blaze  like  fire, 
like  a  sunset " ;  and  again  in  the  hoarded  coins 
on  which  Trina  delighted  to  stretch  her  naked 
limbs  at  night,  in  her  strange  passion  for  money, 
— the  coins  which  finally  lured  McTeague  and  his 
enemy  to  their  hideous  death  in  the  alkali  desert. 
In  the  Epic  of  the  Wheat,  as  we  shall  see  more 
specifically  when  we  come  to  examine  The  Octopus 
in  detail,  the  central  symbol  had  become  an  even 
vaster,  more  relentlessly  dominant  element.  A 
single  State  no  longer  satisfied  him.  What  he 
wanted  was  a  symbol  which  should  sum  up  at  once 
American  life  and  American  prosperity.  His 
friends  are  still  fond  of  telling  of  the  day  when 
he  came  to  his  office  trembling  with  excitement, 
incapacitated  for  work,  his  brain  seething  with 
a  single  thought,  the  Trilogy  of  the  Wheat.  "  I 
have  got  a  big  idea,  the  biggest  I  ever  had,"  was 
the  burden  of  all  he  had  to  say  for  many  a  day 
thereafter. 

Another  obvious  debt  that  Norris  owed  to  the 
creator  of  Les  Rougon-Macquart  is  his  style :  the 
swing  and  march  of  phrase  and  sentence;  the  ex 
uberant  wealth  of  noun  and  adjective;  the  insist 
ent  iteration  with  which  he  develops  an  idea,  ex- 


FRANK  NORRIS  311 

paneling  and  elaborating  and  dwelling  upon  it, 
forcing  it  upon  the  reader  with  accumulated 
synonym  and  metaphor,  driving  it  home  with  the 
dogged  persistence  of  a  trip-hammer.  Here  is  a 
passage  which,  brief  as  it  is,  admirably  illustrates 
this  quality: 

Outside,  the  unleashed  wind  yelled  incessantly,  like 
a  sabbath  of  witches,  and  spun  about  their  pitiful  shel 
ter  and  went  rioting  past,  leaping  and  somersaulting 
from  rock  to  rock,  tossing  handfuls  of  dry,  dust-like 
snow  into  the  air;  folly-stricken,  insensate,  an  enor 
mous,  mad  monster  gamboling  there  in  some  hideous 
dance  of  death,  capricious,  headstrong,  pitiless,  as  a 
famished  wolf. 

And  again,  in  accordance  not  only  with  Zola 
but  with  the  entire  Continental  school  of  realism, 
Norris  delights  in  dwelling  upon  the  physical  side 
of  life.  With  the  exception  of  The  Pit,  the  char 
acters  in  his  books  are  none  of  them  possessed 
of  an  over-refinement  of  sentiment;  they  are  nor 
mal  beings  with  a  healthy  animality  about  them, 
rugged,  rough-hewn  men  and  dauntless  self-suffi 
cient  women.  He  dealt  by  preference  with  primi 
tive  natures,  dominated  by  single  passions.  His 
favorite  heroes  are  cast  in  a  giant  mold,  big  of 
bone  and  strong  of  sinew,  with  square-cut  heads 
and  a  salient,  "  prognathous  "  jaw.  Such  was 


312  FRANK  NORRIS 

Captain  Kitchell,  in  Moran  of  the  Lady  Letty; 
such  also  was  McTeague: 

A  young  giant,  carrying  his  huge  shock  of  blond 
hair  six  feet  three  inches  from  the  ground ;  moving  his 
immense  limbs,  heavy  with  ropes  of  muscle,  slowly, 
ponderously.  His  hands  were  enormous,  red  and  cov 
ered  with  a  fell  of  stiff,  yellow  hair.  His  head  was 
square-cut,  angular;  the  jaw  salient,  like  that  of  the 
carnivora. 

Bennett  also,  in  A  Man's  Woman,  is  of  the 
same  brotherhood. 

His  lower  jaw  was  huge,  almost  to  deformity,  like 
that  of  a  bull-dog,  the  chin  salient,  the  mouth  close- 
gripped,  the  great  lips  indomitable,  brutal.  The  fore 
head  was  contracted  and  small,  the  forehead  of  men 
of  single  ideas,  and  the  eyes,  too,  were  small  and 
twinkling,  one  of  them  marred  by  a  sharply  defined 
cast. 

In  dealing  with  women,  it  was  Norris's  wont  to 
paint  pleasanter  pictures.  But  here  too  he  dwelt 
mainly  on  physical  attributes.  He  never  wearied 
of  describing  their  features,  the  color  of  their  hair 
and  eyes,  the  fragrance  of  their  neck  and  arms, 
their  "  whole  sweet  personality."  It  is  curious 
to  see  what  a  fascination  woman's  hair  seems  to 
have  had  for  Norris;  it  fairly  haunted  him  like 


FRANK  NORRIS  313 

an  obsession.  He  dwelt  upon  it  constantly,  lin- 
geringly;  it  is  the  one  great  charm  of  each  and 
all  of  his  heroines, — they  are  forever  smoothing 
it,  braiding  it,  putting  it  up  or  down ;  it  enters 
into  and  lends  color  to  their  every  mood.  Moran 
Sternerson  has  "  an  enormous  mane  of  rye-col 
ored  hair,"  which  "  whipped  across  her  face  and 
streamed  out  in  the  wind  like  streamers  of  the 
northern  lights."  Travis  Bessemer,  in  Blix,  "  trim 
and  trig  and  crisp  as  a  crack  yacht,"  also  has 
yellow  hair,  "  not  golden  nor  flaxen,  but  plain, 
honest  yellow  " ;  "  sweet,  yellow  hair,  rolling  from 
her  forehead."  Lloyd  Searight,  in  A  Man's 
Woman,  has  auburn  hair,  "  a  veritable  glory ;  a 
dull  red  flame,  that  bore  back  from  her  face  in  one 
grand  solid  roll,  dull  red  like  copper  or  old 
bronze,  thick,  heavy,  almost  gorgeous  in  its  som 
ber  radiance."  Even  small,  delicate,  ansemic  Trina 
McTeague  has  "  heaps  and  heaps  of  blue-black 
coils  and  braids?  a  royal  crown  of  swarthy  bands, 
a  veritable  sable  tiara,  heavy,  abundant,  odorous. 
All  the  vitality  that  should  have  given  color  to 
her  face  seemed  to  have  been  absorbed  by  this 
marvelous  hair." 

But  it  is  not  alone  the  redolence  of  woman's 
hair  on  which  Norris  likes  to  dwell;  his  pages 
diffuse  a  veritable  carnival  of  odors.  McTeague's 
dental  parlors  give  forth  "  a  mingled  odor  of  bed 
ding,  creosote  and  ether " ;  in  Blix  the  Chinese 


314  FRANK  NORRIS 

quarter  suggests  "  sandalwood,  punk,  incense,  oil 
and  the  smell  of  mysterious  cookery."  Here  again 
is  the  fragrance  of  the  country  in  midsummer: 

During  the  day  the  air  was  full  of  odors,  distilled 
as  it  were  by  high  noon.  The  sweet  smell  of  ripening 
apples,  the  fragrance  of  warm  sap  and  leaves  and 
growing  grass,  the  smell  of  cows  from  the  nearby 
pastures,  the  pungent  ammoniacal  suggestion  of  the 
stable  back  of  the  house,  and  the  odor  of  scorching 
paint  blistering  on  the  southern  walls. 

And  as  a  companion-piece  to  the  foregoing, 
here  is  an  unsavory  little  paragraph,  giving  a 
glimpse  of  the  starving  occupants  of  a  wind- 
buffeted  tent  in  the  Arctic  regions, — a  para 
graph  redeemed  only  by  the  dramatic  suggestion 
of  the  closing  words: 

The  tent  was  full  of  foul  smells :  the  smell  of  drugs 
and  of  moldy  gunpowder,  the  smell  of  dirty  rags,  of 
unwashed  bodies,  the  smell  of  stale  smoke,  of  scorch 
ing  sealskin,  of  soaked  and  rotting  canvas  that  ex 
haled  from  the  tent  cover, — every  smell  but  that  of 
food. 

One  does  not  have  to  read  far  into  Norris  be 
fore  discovering  the  strong  underlying  note  of 
primevalism  in  him,  the  undisguised  delight  that 
he  took  in  pointing  out  that,  in  spite  of  our 


FRANK  NORRIS  315 

boasted  civilization,  La  Bete  Hwmawe  is  still 
rather  close  to  the  surface,  our  veneer  of  conven 
tionalism  sadly  thin.  He  welcomed  eagerly  the 
nature  revival  in  literature :  "  Mr.  Seton  and  his 
school  .  .  .  opened  a  door,  opened  a  window,  and 
mere  literature  has  given  place  to  life.  The  sun 
has  come  in  and  the  great  winds,  and  the  smell 
of  the  baking  alkali  on  the  Arizona  deserts  and 
the  reek  of  the  tar-weed  on  the  Colorado  slopes ; 
and  nature  has  .  .  .  become  a  thing  intimate  and 
familiar  and  rejuvenating."  In  his  own  books, 
he  preferred,  wherever  possible,  to  isolate  his  men 
and  women,  to  get  them  away  from  the  artificiality 
of  pink  teas  and  ballrooms,  and  set  them  face  to 
face  with  the  open  sky  and  their  own  passions. 
He  delighted  in  "  the  great  reach  of  the  ocean 
floor,  the  unbroken  plane  of  the  blue  sky,  and  the 
bare,  green  slope  of  land, — three  immensities,  gi 
gantic,  vast,  primordial,"  scenes  wherein  "  the 
mind  harks  back  unconsciously  to  the  broad,  sim 
pler,  basic  emotions,  the  fundamental  instincts  of 
the  race."  He  was  nearly  always  at  his  best  when 
describing  the  elemental,  unchanging  aspects  of 
nature ;  the  "  golden  eye  of  a  tropic  heaven,"  the 
"  unremitting  gallop  of  unnumbered  multitudes 
of  gray-green  seas  " ;  the  "  remorseless  scourge  of 
the  noon  sun  "  in  the  desert  waste  of  Death  Val 
ley,  where  "  the  very  shadows  shrank  away,  hid 
ing  under  sage-bushes,"  and  "  all  the  world  was 


816  FRANK  NORRIS 

one  gigantic,  blinding  glare,  silent,  motionless." 
Better  than  any  of  these  is  the  following  picture 
of  the  limitless  desolation  of  the  Arctic  icefields  : 

In  front  of  the  tent,  and  over  a  ridge  of  barren 
rock,  was  an  arm  of  the  sea,  dotted  with  blocks  of  ice, 
moving  silently  and  swiftly  onward ;  while  back  from 
the  coast,  and  back  from  the  tent,  and  to  the  south 
and  to  the  west  and  to  the  east,  stretched  the  il 
limitable  waste  of  land,  rugged,  gray,  harsh,  snow 
and  ice  and  rock,  rock  and  ice  and  snow,  stretching 
away  there  under  the  somber  sky,  forever  and  for 
ever,  gloomy,  untamed,  terrible,  an  empty  region — 
the  scarred  battlefield  of  chaotic  forces,  the  savage 
desolation  of  a  prehistoric  world. 

Such,  in  brief,  are  the  materials  and  the  meth 
ods  of  Norris's  art  as  a  novelist:  big  words,  big 
phrases,  big  ideas,  an  untrammeled  freedom  of 
self-expression.  He  could  not  be  true  to  himself, 
if  hampered  by  a  narrow  canvas.  That  is  why  it  is 
as  incongruous  to  look  to  Frank  Norris  for  short 
stories  as  it  would  be  to  set  a  Rodin  to  carving 
cherry  pits,  or  a  Verestschagin  to  tinting  lantern 
slides.  Yet  it  does  not  follow  that  the  short  tales 
rescued  from  the  magazine  files  and  collected  un 
der  the  title  A  Deal  in  Wheat,  were  not  worth 
preservation.  On  the  contrary,  they  are  full  of 
keen  interest  to  the  student  of  fiction.  No  one 
but  Norris  could  have  written  them;  every  page 


FRANK  NORRIS  317 

testifies  to  the  uncrushable  vitality  of  the  man.  But 
to  call  them  short  stories  is  to  misname  them. 
They  impress  one  as  fragments,  rather  splendid 
fragments ;  trials  of  the  author's  strength,  be 
fore  he  launched  forth  upon  more  serious  work. 
Take,  for  instance,  the  opening  story  which  gives 
the  title  to  the  volume.  It  was  palpably  written 
for  practice,  a  sort  of  five-finger  exercise  in  prepa 
ration  for  Norris's  last  volume,  The  Pit — and 
from  this  point  of  view  it  possesses  a  definite  in 
terest.  But  taken  as  a  story,  it  is  at  once  too 
long  and  too  short.  He  attempted  to  cover  alto 
gether  too  much  ground;  he  might,  with  advan 
tage,  have  brought  it  to  a  conclusion  some  pages 
sooner, — and  yet,  when  the  end  is  reached,  there 
remains  a  sense  of  incompleteness.  In  the  whole 
collection  there  is  just  one  story  that  stands  out 
unique  and  forceful,  "  A  Memorandum  of  Sudden 
Death."  This  memorandum  is  a  fragment  of  a 
journal  supposed  to  be  written  by  a  wounded 
soldier,  one  of  a  small  company  of  troopers  who 
have  been  relentlessly  trailed,  day  after  day,  by  a 
band  of  hostile  Indians,  through  desolate  miles  of 
sand  and  sagebrush  until  the  final  attack  is  made. 
If  we  agree  to  overlook  the  improbability  of 
the  whole  thing;  if  we  grant  that  a  man 
with  one  or  two  bullets  in  him,  and  with  his 
comrades  all  dead  or  dying  on  the  ground  beside 
him,  could  go  on  recording  passing  events  with 


818  FRANK  NORRIS 

the  accuracy,  the  minuteness,  the  astounding  at 
mosphere  of  this  story,  then  we  must  admit  that 
it  is  Norris's  nearest  approach  to  the  artistic  unity 
of  the  short-story  form. 

Of  Norris's  longer  stories,  Moran  of  the  Lady 
Letty  was  the  first  to  don  the  dignity  of  print, 
although  the  greater  part  of  McTeague  antedates 
it  in  point  of  actual  composition.  It  is  a  fact 
not  generally  known  that  the  nucleus  of  Mc 
Teague  was  submitted  as  part  of  the  required 
theme  work  during  Norris's  period  of  post-gradu 
ate  study  at  Harvard  University,  and  that  it  was 
conscientiously  elaborated  and  polished  for  four 
years  before  it  was  finally  given  to  the  public. 
Moran,  the  author's  one  frankly  romantic  story, 
was  dashed  off  in  an  interval  of  relaxation.  Its 
swift  popularity  suggested  that  an  easy  avenue 
to  fortune  lay  open  to  him;  for  Norris  had  a 
lively  gift  for  stories  of  the  blood-and-thunder  or 
der,  and  often  entertained  his  friends  by  reeling 
off  extemporized  sword-and-buckler  plots  by  the 
yard.  But  from  the  beginning  he  took  fiction  too 
seriously  to  debase  it;  and  even  Moran  has  a  cer 
tain  primitive  bigness  about  it,  a  rhythm  of  north 
ern  runes,  a  spirit  of  ancient  sagas.  There  are 
whole  chapters  conceived  with  reckless  disregard 
of  plausibility ;  but  that  does  not  make  it  any 
the  less  a  strong,  fresh  idyl  of  the  sea,  full  of 
the  dash  of  waves  and  the  pungency  of  salt 


FRANK  NORRIS  319 

breezes, — full  also  of  health  and  vitality  and  clean 
hearts,  and  amply  redeemed  by  the  brave,  frank, 
loyal  character  of  that  "  daughter  of  a  hundred 
Vikings,"  Moran  herself.  It  is  probable  that  in 
this  volume  Norris  had  no  underlying  motive,  no 
central  idea  beyond  the  wish  to  tell  a  story;  and 
yet  one  likes  to  think  that,  consciously  or  uncon 
sciously,  he  embodied  in  Moran  his  ideal  of  the 
muse  of  fiction,  the  spirit  of  the  novel  of  the 
future.  Listen  for  a  moment  to  his  own  descrip 
tion  of  this  spirit  as  given  in  one  of  his  later 
essays : 

She  is  a  Child  of  the  People,  this  muse  of  our  fic 
tion  of  the  future,  and  the  wind  of  a  new  country,  a 
new  heaven  and  a  new  earth  is  in  her  face  and  has 
blown  her  hair  from  out  the  fillets  that  the  Old  World 
muse  has  bound  across  her  brow,  so  that  it  is  all  in 
disarray.  The  tan  of  the  sun  is  on  her  cheeks,  and 
the  dust  of  the  highway  is  thick  upon  her  buskin,  and 
the  elbowing  of  many  men  has  torn  the  robe  of  her, 
and  her  hands  are  hard  with  the  grip  of  many  things. 
She  is  hail-fellow-well-met  with  every  one  she  meets, 
unashamed  to  know  the  clown  and  unashamed  to  face 
the  king,  a  hardy,  vigorous  girl,  with  an  arm  as  strong 
as  a  man's  and  a  heart  as  sensitive  as  a  child's. 

Read  these  words  once  again  and  ponder  on 
them ;  then  go  back  to  Moran  of  the  Lady  Letty 
and  see  if  you  do  not  find  in  it  a  hitherto  un- 


320  FRANK  NORRIS 

guessed  amplitude,  a  gladder  sense  of  the  joy  of 
living,  a  deeper  pathos  in  the  absolutely  right,  the 
artistically  inevitable  tragedy  with  which  it  ends. 

Of  McTeague  almost  enough  has  been  said  al 
ready.  It  is  the  most  frankly  brutal  thing  that 
Norris  ever  wrote;  its  realism  is  as  unsparing  as 
d'Annunzio's,  though  its  theme  is  cleaner.  It  is 
a  remorseless  study  of  heredity  and  environment, 
symbolizing  the  greed  of  gold  and  domi 
nated  throughout  by  the  gigantic  figure  of  the 
dull  and  brutish  dentist,  ox-like,  ponderous  and 
slow.  Necessarily,  it  is  a  repellent  book;  and  yet 
there  is  about  it  that  curious  attraction  which 
certain  forms  of  ugliness  possess  when  they  attain 
a  degree  of  perfection  amounting  to  a  fine  art^ 
McTeague  docs  not  begin  to  show  the  breadth  of 
purpose  or  the  technical  skill  of  The  Octopus  or 
The  Pit;  yet  there  are  times  when  one  is  tempted 
to  award  it  a  higher  place  for  all-around  excel 
lence.  There  is  a  better  balance  between  the  cen 
tral  theme  and  the  individual  characters, — or  to 
state  it  differently,  between  the  underlying  ethics 
and  the  so-called  human  interest.  If  Norris  had  ,. 
never  written  another  book,  he  would  still  have 
lived  in  McTeague,  just  as  surely  as  George 
Douglas  Brown  still  lives  in  The  House  with  the 
Green  Shutters. 

Bl'iXy  which  came  next  in  point  of  time,  offers  a 
sharp,   even    an    astonishing,    contrast.      It    is    a 


FRANK  NORRIS  321 

sparkling  little  love  story,  clean  and  wholesome, 
the  chronicle  of  an  unconscious  courtship  between 
a  young  couple  who  begin  by  agreeing  that  they 
do  not  love  each  other,  and  then  try  the  dangerous 
experiment  of  attempting  to  be  simply  and  frankly 
good  friends.  There  is  an  effervescence,  an  irre 
pressible  bubbling  up  of  youthful  spirits,  a  nai've 
good  comradeship  quite  free  from  the  embarrass 
ment  of  sex  consciousness,  all  of  which  gives  to 
the  volume  a  special  piquancy  of  actuality.  One 
feels  that  if  it  were  possible  to  ask  Frank  Norris 
a  few  leading  questions  about  Blix,  he  would 
have  answered,  as  Marion  Crawford  answered 
apropos  of  The  Three  Fates,  and  with  something 
of  the  same  wistfulness,  "  The  fact  is,  I  put  a  good 
deal  of  myself  into  that  book." 

Woma/n^\s^  of  all  Norris's  novels,  the 


nearest  approach  to  a  failure,  the  one  that  shows 
the  greatest  gulf  between  purpose  and  accomplish 
ment.  The  central  figures  are  an  Arctic  explorer 
whose  heart  is  divided  between  two  passions,  love 
and  ambition  ;  and  a  woman,  "  a  grand,  noble 
man's  woman,"  strong  enough  to  subordinate  her 
own  love  for  him  to  the  furtherance  of  that  ambi 
tion,  the  discovery  of  the  North  Pole.  (The  story 
abounds  in  strong  situations  of  an  intensity  often 
bordering  on  the  repellent  ;\  and  the  convincing 
pictures  of  helpless  isolated'humanity,  agonizing 
amidst  the  desolate  ice-plains  of  the  far  North, 


FRANK  NORRIS 

cannot  fail  to  win  an  honest,  even  though  grudg 
ing,  recognition. (But  the  book  as  a  whole  is  keyed 
a  trifle  too  high  ;~it  is  overweighted  with  too  pon 
derous  words  and  phrases,  with  too  tense  and  too 
sustained  a  pressure  of  emotions.  One  feels  that 
people  could  not  go  on  living  and  keep  their  sanity, 
if  life  were  such  a  constant  blare  of  passions,  such 
a  crude,  raw  presentment  of  primitive  humanity, 
born  out  of  time, — the  Stone  Age  transferred  to 
the  twentieth  century^)  And  yet,  like  all  of  Nor- 
ris's  work,  it  has  its  lure,  its  compelling  force. 
We  will  not  open  the  book  again,  we  will  not  read 
another  line!  And  yet,  wait  a  moment, — our  eye 
has  just  caught  another  passage, — listen  to  this: 

I  There  were  six  of  them  left,  huddled  together  in 
mat  miserable  tent,  .  .  .  Their  hair  and  beards  were 
long-,'  and  seemed  one  with  the  fur  covering  their 
bodies.  Their  faces  were  absolutely  black  with  dirt, 
and  their  limbs  were  monstrously  distended  and  fat — 
fat  as  things  bloated  and  swollen  are  fat.  It  was  the 
abnormal  fatness  of  starvation,  the  irony  of  misery, 
the  huge  joke  that  Arctic  famine  plays  upon  those 
whom  it  afterwards  destroys.  The  men  moved  about 
at  times  on  their  hands  and  knees ;  their  tongues  were 
distended,  round  and  slate-colored,  like  the  tongues 
of  parrots,  and  when  they  spoke  they  bit  them  help 
lessly.  N. 

Here  in  a  single  paragraph  we  have  the  domi- 


FRANK  NORRIS  329 

those  of  his  earlier  volumes ;  they  have  less  of  the 
primordial  and  the  titanic  in  their  composition  and 
considerably  more  of  the  average,  every-day  foi 
bles  and  weaknesses.  One  feels  that  somehow  and 
somewhere  he  had  gained  a  deeper  insight  into  the 
hearts  of  the  men  and  women  about  him ;  and  that 
this  was  what  Owen  Wister  had  in  mind  when  he 
wrote,  "  In  The  Pit  Norris  has  risen  on  stepping- 
stones  to  higher  things."  And  yet  The  Pit  is  just 
as  much  a  structural  part  of  the  whole  design  of 
Norris's  trilogy  as  was  The  Octopus:;  it  has  that 
same  inherent  epic  bigness  of  theme ; — a  gigantic 
attempt  to  corner  the  entire  world's  supply  of 
wheat,  to  force  it  up,  up,  up,  and  hold  the  price 
through  April,  and  May,  and  June, — and  then 
finally  the  new  crop  comes  pouring  in  and  the 
daring  speculator  is  overwhelmed  by  the  rising 
tide,  "  a  human  insect,  impotently  striving  to  hold 
back  with  his  puny  hand  the  output  of  the  whole 
world's  granaries." 

Such  are  the  books  which  Norris,  with  feverish 
impatience  and  tireless  nervous  energy,  produced 
in  the  few  short  years  that  fate  allotted  hint  They 
stand  to-day  as  the  substructure  of  a  temple™"des- 
tined  never  to  be  finished,  the  splendidly  rugged 
torso  of  a  broken  statue.  That  is  the  way,  the 
best,  the  truest,  the  only  way,  in  which  to  think 
of  Norris's  place  in  American  fiction, — as  only 
a  partial  fulfilment  of  a  rarely  brilliant  promise. 


330  FRANK  NORRIS 

Had  he  lived  to  attain  his  full  stature,  there  is 
small  doubt  that  he  would  have  given  us  bigger, 
stronger,  more  vital  novels  than  the  younger 
American  school  has  yet  produced. 


By  courtesy  of  The  Neale  Publishing  Co. 
AMBROSE  BIERCE 


AMBROSE  BIERCE 

IN  the  preface  to  the  fourth  volume  of  his  col 
lected  works,  the  volume  containing  under  the 
title  of  Sliapes  of  Clay  the  major  portion  of 
purely  personal  satiric  verse,  Mr.  Ambrose  Bierce 
emphatically  expresses  his  belief  in  the  right  of 
any  author  "  to  have  his  fugitive  work  in  news 
papers  and  periodicals  put  into  a  more  permanent 
form  during  his  lifetime  if  he  can."  No  one  is 
likely  to  dispute  Mr.  Bierce's  contention ;  but  it 
is  often  a  grave  question  how  far  it  is  wise  for 
the  individual  to  exercise  his  inalienable  rights. 
And  in  the  case  of  authors  the  question  comes 
down  to  this :  How  far  is  it  to  their  own  best  in 
terests  to  dilute  their  finer  and  more  enduring  work 
with  that  which  is  mediocre  and  ephemeral?  For 
it  is  unfortunately  true  that  no  author  is  measured 
by  his  high  lights  alone,  but  by  the  resultant  im 
pression  of  blended  light  and  shade ;  and  there  is 
many  a  writer  among  the  recognized  classics  who 
to-day  would  take  a  higher  rank  had  a  kindly  and 
discriminating  fate  assigned  three-quarters  of  his 
life-work  to  a  merciful  oblivion. 
331 


332  AMBROSE  BIERCE 

To  the  student  of  American  letters,  however, 
the  comprehensive  edition  of  Ambrose  Bierce's 
writings  recently  issued  in  ten  portly  and  well- 
made  volumes  cannot  fail  to  be  welcome.  It 
places  at  once  within  convenient  reach  a  great 
mass  of  material  which,  good,  bad  or  indifferent, 
as  the  case  may  be,  all  helps  to  throw  suggestive 
side  lights  upon  the  author,  his  methods  and  his 
outlook  upon  life.  It  forces  the  reader  who  per 
chance  has  hitherto  known  Mr.  Bierce  solely  as 
a  master  of  the  short  story,  to  realize  that  this 
part  of  his  work  has  been,  throughout  a  long  and 
busy  life,  a  sort  of  side  issue  and  that  the  great 
measure  of  his  activities  has  been  expended  upon 
social  and  political  satire.  And  similarly,  those 
who  have  known  him  best  as  the  fluent  producer 
of  stinging  satiric  verse  suddenly  recognize  how 
versatile  and  many-sided  are  his  literary  gifts. 
The  ten  volumes  are  divided  as  follows:  three  vol 
umes  of  prose  fiction;  two  volumes  of  satiric 
verse;  two  volumes  of  literary  and  miscellaneous 
essays ;  and  three  volumes  consisting  mainly  of 
satiric  prose,  including  a  greatly  amplified  edi 
tion  of  that  curiously  caustic  piece  of  irony,  The 
Cynic's  Word  Book,  now  for  the  first  time  pub 
lished  under  the  title  of  Mr.  Bierce's  own  choos 
ing,  The  Devil's  Dictionary.  It  seems,  therefore, 
most  convenient  to  consider  Mr.  Bierce,  the  Man 
of  Letters,  under  three  separate  aspects:  the 


AMBROSE  BIERCE  333 

Critic,  the  Satirist  and  the  Master  of  the  Short 
Story. 

Regarding  literary  criticism,  Mr.  Bierce  says 
quite  frankly  "  the  saddest  thing  about  the  trade 
of  writing  is  that  the  writer  can  never  know,  nor 
hope  to  know,  if  he  is  a  good  workman.  In  lit 
erary  criticism,  there  are  no  criteria,  no  accepted 
standards  of  excellence  by  which  to  test  the  work." 
Now  there  is  just  enough  truth  in  this  attitude  of 
mind  to  make  it  a  rather  dangerous  one.  If  there 
were  literally  no  accepted  standards  in  any  of 
the  arts,  no  principles  to  which  a  certain  influ 
ential  majority  of  critical  minds  had  given  their 
adhesion,  then  literature  and  all  the  arts  would 
be  in  a  state  of  perennial  anarchy.  But  of  course 
any  writer  who  believes  in  his  heart  that  there  are 
no  criteria  will  necessarily  remain  in  lifelong  ig 
norance  regarding  his  own  worth;  for  it  is  only 
through  learning  how  to  criticise  others  sanely 
and  justly  that  one  acquires  even  the  rudiments 
of  self-criticism.  And  incidentally,  it  may  be  ob 
served  that  no  better  proof  of  Mr.  Bierce's  funda 
mental  lack  of  this  valuable  asset  could  be  asked 
than  the  retention  in  these  ten  volumes  of  a  con 
siderable  amount  of  journalistic  rubbish  side  by 
side  with  flashes  of  undoubted  genius.  Mr. 
Bierce's  entire  essay  on  the  subject  of  criticism 
is  a  sort  of  literary  agnosticism,  a  gloomy  denial 
of  faith.  He  has  no  confidence  in  the  judgment 


334  AMBROSE  BIERCE 

of  the  general  public  nor  in  that  of  the  profes 
sional  critic.  He  admits  that  "  in  a  few  centu 
ries,  more  or  less,  there  may  arrive  a  critic  that 
we  call '  Posterity  '  " ;  but  Posterity,  he  complains, 
is  a  trifle  slow.  Accordingly,  since  the  worth  of 
any  contemporary  writer  is  reduced  to  mere  guess 
work,  he,  Ambrose  Bierce,  has  scant  use  for  his 
contemporaries.  He  has  very  definite  ideas  re 
garding  the  training  of  young  writers  and  tells 
us  at  some  length  the  course  through  which  he 
would  like  to  put  an  imaginary  pupil,  but  he  adds : 

If  I  caught  him  reading  a  newly  published  book, 
save  by  way  of  penance,  it  would  go  hard  with  him. 
Of  our  modern  education  he  should  have  enough  to 
read  the  ancients:  Plato,  Aristotle,  Marcus  Aurelius, 
Seneca  and  that  lot — custodians  of  most  of  what  is 
worth  knowing. 

In  spite  of  the  pains  to  which  Mr.  Bierce  goes 
to  deny  that  he  is  a  laudator  temporis  acti,  the 
term  fits  him  admirably — and  nowhere  is  this  atti 
tude  of  mind  more  conspicuous  than  in  his  treat 
ment  of  the  modern  novel.  It  is  important,  how 
ever,  to  get  clearly  in  mind  the  arbitrary  sense 
in  which  he  uses  the  word  novel  as  distinguished 
from  what  he  chooses  to  call  romance.  His  occa 
sional  half-definitions  are  somewhat  confusing; 
but  apparently  by  the  novel  he  means  realistic 
fiction  as  distinguished  from  romantic  fiction — a 


AMBROSE  BIERCE  335 

distinction  complicated  by  the  further  idiosyn 
crasy  that  by  realism  he  understands  almost  ex 
clusively  the  commonplaces  of  actuality  and  by 
romanticism  any  happening  which  is  out  of  the 
ordinary.  The  novel,  then,  in  his  sense  of  the 
word  is  "  a  snow  plant ;  it  has  no  root  in  the 
permanent  soil  of  literature,  and  does  not  long 
hold  its  place;  it  is  of  the  lowest  form  of  imagi 
nation."  And  again :  "  The  novel  bears  the  same 
relation  to  literature  that  the  panorama  bears  to 
painting;  with  whatever  skill  and  feeling  the 
panorama  is  painted,  it  must  lack  that  basic  qual 
ity  in  all  art,  unity,  totality  of  effect."  He  seems 
utterly  unaware  that  the  great  gain  in  modern 
fiction,  the  one  indisputable  factor  that  separates 
it  from  the  fiction  of  half  a  century  ago,  is  pre 
cisely  the  basic  quality  of  unity.  The  modern 
novel  whose  technique  most  nearly  approaches 
perfection  is  the  one  which  when  read  rapidly  with 
"  a  virgin  attention  at  a  single  sitting  " — to  bor 
row  Mr.  Bierce's  own  phrase — gives  an  impres 
sion  of  as  single-hearted  a  purpose  as  one  finds 
in  the  most  faultless  of  Maupassant's  three-thou 
sand-word  masterpieces.  It  is  quite  possible  for 
any  well-trained  reader  to  go  through  even  the 
longest  of  novels  at  a  single  sitting.  The  present 
writer  would  feel  himself  grievously  at  fault  if 
he  interrupted  his  first  reading  of  any  novel  that 
had  been  given  him  for  the  purpose  of  review; 


336  AMBROSE  BIERCE 

and  he  well  remembers  that  in  only  two  recent 
cases  did  he  become  conscious  of  the  prolonged 
strain :  namely,  Mr.  Kipling's  Kim,  which  re 
quired  an  uninterrupted  attention  of  eight  and 
one-half  hours,  and  The  Golden  Bowl,  of  Mr. 
James,  which  required  somewhat  more  than  eleven. 
Mr.  Bierce's  attitude,  however,  is  partly  ex 
plained  by  his  obiter  dictum  that  "  no  man  who 
has  anything  else  to  do  can  critically  read  more 
than  two  or  three  books  in  a  month  " — and  of 
course,  if  you  are  going  to  allow  an  average  of 
ten  days  to  a  book,  the  most  perfect  unity  of 
purpose  is  inevitably  going  to  drop  out  of  sight. 

All  of  this  helps  us  to  understand  how  it  hap 
pens  that  Mr.  Bierce,  otherwise  a  man  of  intelli 
gence,  can  say  in  all  seriousness  that  "  in  Eng 
land  and  America  the  art  of  novel  writing  is  as 
dead  as  Queen  Anne."  Listen  also  to  the  follow 
ing  literary  blasphemy: 

So  far  as  I  am  able  to  judge,  no  good  novels  are 
now  "  made  in  Germany,"  nor  in  France,  nor  in  any 
European  country  except  Russia.  The  Russians  are 
writing  novels  which  so  far  as  one  may  venture  to 
judge  .  .  .  are  in  their  way  admirable;  full  of  fire 
and  light,  like  an  opal  .  .  .  ;  in  their  hands  the 
novel  grew  great — as  it  did  in  those  of  Richardson 
and  Fielding,  and  as  it  would  have  done  in  those  of 
Thackeray  and  Pater  if  greatness  in  that  form  of 
fiction  had  been  longer  possible  in  England. 


AMBROSE  BIERCE  337 

Or  again: 

Not  only  is  the  novel  ...  a  faulty  form  of  art,  but 
because  of  its  faultiness  it  has  no  permanent  place  in 
literature.  In  England  it  flourished  less  than  a  cen 
tury  and  a  half,  beginning  with  Richardson  and  end 
ing  with  Thackeray,  since  whose  death  no  novels, 
probably,  have  been  written  that  are  worth  attention. 

Think  for  a  moment  what  this  means.  Here  is 
a  man  who  has  ventured  to  speak  seriously  about 
the  modern  novel,  and  who  confessedly  is  unaware 
of  the  importance  of  Trollope  and  Meredith  and 
Hardy,  of  Henry  James  and  Rudyard  Kipling 
and  Maurice  Hewlett — and  who  deliberately  ig 
nores  the  existence  of  Flaubert  and  Maupassant 
and  Zola,  Galdos  and  Valdes,  Verga  and  d'An- 
nunzio !  It  is  not  astonishing  after  that  to  find 
Mr.  Bierce  seriously  questioning  the  value  of  epic 
poetry :  "  What  more  than  they  gave,"  he  asks, 
"  might  we  not  have  had  from  Virgil  (sic),  Dante, 
Tasso,  Camoens  and  Milton,  if  they  had  not  found 
the  epic  poem  ready  to  their  misguided  hands  ?  " 

The  fact  is  that  Mr.  Bierce  as  a  critic  is  of 
the  iconoclastic  variety.  He  breaks  down  but  does 
not  build  up.  He  has  no  patience  with  the  his 
torical  form  of  criticism  that  traces  the  intel 
lectual  genealogy  of  authorship,  showing,  for  in 
stance,  Maupassant's  debt  to  Poe  or  Bourget's 
debt  to  Stendhal.  He  is  equally  intolerant  of 


338  AMBROSE  BIERCE 

that  analytical  method — the  fairest  of  them  all — 
that  judges  every  written  work  by  its  author's 
purpose  as  nearly  as  this  may  be  read  between 
the  lines.  Nothing  is  more  certain,  he  says,  than 
if  a  writer  of  genius  should  bring  to  his  task  the 
purposes  which  the  critics  trace  in  the  completed 
work,  "  the  book  would  remain  forever  unwritten, 
to  the  unspeakable  advantage  of  letters  and 
morals."  Yes,  he  tears  down  the  recognized 
methods  of  criticism  but  suggests  nothing  better 
in  their  place.  And  when  he  himself  undertakes 
to  criticise,  it  is  hardly  ever  for  the  purpose  of 
paying  tribute  to  excellence — with  the  noteworthy 
exception,  mirabile  dictu,  of  his  extraordinary 
praise  of  George  Stirling's  poetic  orgy  of  words, 
"The  Wine  of  Wizardry."  Tolstoy,  for  in 
stance,  he  defines  as  a  literary  giant :  "  He  has  a 
giant's  strength  and  has  unfortunately  learned  to 
use  it  like  a  giant — which  means  not  necessarily 
with  conscious  cruelty,  but  with  stupidity."  The 
journal  of  Marie  Bashkirtseff — the  last  book  on 
earth  that  one  would  expect  Mr.  Bierce  to  discuss 
— he  sums  up  as  "  morbid,  hysterical  and  unpleas 
ant  beyond  anything  of  its  kind  in  literature." 
Among  modern  critics  he  pronounces  Mr.  How- 
ells  "  the  most  mischievous,  because  the  ablest,  of 
all  this  sycophantic  crew." 

The  truth  is  that  the  value  of  Mr.  Bierce  as  a 
critic  lies  solely  in  his  fearlessness  and  downright 


AMBROSE  BIERCE  339 

sincerity,  his  unswerving  conviction  that  he  is 
right.  He  has  to  a  rather  greater  extent  than 
many  a  better  critic  the  quality  of  consistency; 
and  no  matter  how  widely  we  are  forced  to  dis 
agree  with  his  conclusions  there  is  not  one  of 
them  that  does  not  throw  an  interesting  side  light 
upon  Mr.  Bierce,  the  man. 

The  short  stories  and  the  serious  critical  pa 
pers  of  Mr.  Bierce  have  appeared  in  a  spasmodic 
and  desultory  way,  but  from  first  to  last  he  has 
been  at  heart  a  satirist  of  the  school  of  Lucilius 
and  Juvenal,  eager  to  scourge  the  follies  and  the 
foibles  of  mankind  at  large.  The  fact  that  Mr. 
Bierce  is  absolutely  in  earnest,  that  he  is  destitute 
of  fear  and  confessedly  incorruptible  accounts  for 
the  oft-repeated  statement  that  he  was  for  years 
the  best  loved  and  the  most  hated  man  on  the  Pa 
cific  Coast.  Now  the  ability  to  use  a  stinging 
lash  of  words  is  all  very  well  in  itself;  it  is  a  gift 
that  is  none  too  common.  But  to  be  effective 
it  must  not  be  used  too  freely.  The  two  ample 
volumes  of  Mr.  Bierce's  poetical  invectives  form 
a  striking  object  lesson  of  the  wisdom  in  Ham 
let's  contention  that  unless  you  treat  men  better 
than  they  deserve  none  will  escape  a  whipping. 
And  when  fresh  from  a  perusal  of  the  contents  of 
Shapes  of  Clay  and  Black  Beetles  in  Amber,  one 
has  become  so  accustomed  to  seeing  men  flayed 
alive  that  a  whole  skin  possesses  something  of  a 


340  AMBROSE  BIERCE 

novelty.  Now  there  is  no  question  that  there 
is  a  good  deal  wrong  with  the  world,  just  as  there 
always  has  been,  if  one  takes  the  trouble  to  look 
for  it.  But  when  any  one  man  takes  upon  himself 
the  task  of  reprimanding  the  universe,  it  is  not 
unreasonable  that  we  should  ask  ourselves  in  the 
first  instance:  What  manner  of  man  is  this? 
What  are  his  standards  and  beliefs?  And, 
if  he  had  his  way,  what  new  lamps  would  he 
give  us  in  place  of  the  old?  In  the  case 
of  Mr.  Bierce  it  is  a  little  difficult  to  make 
answer  with  full  assurance.  Somewhere  in  his 
preface  he  has  said  that  he  has  not  attempted 
to  classify  his  writings  under  the  separate  heads 
of  serious,  ironical,  humorous  and  the  like,  as 
suming  that  his  readers  have  sufficient  intelligence 
to  recognize  the  difference  for  themselves.  But 
this  is  not  always  easy  to  do,  because  in  satire 
these  different  qualities  and  moods  overlap  each 
other  so  that  there  is  always  the  danger  of  taking 
too  literally  what  is  really  an  ironical  exaggera 
tion.  Here,  however,  is  a  rather  significant  pas 
sage  taken  from  a  serious  essay  entitled  "  To 
Train  a  Writer  " ;  it  sets  forth  the  convictions  and 
the  general  attitude  toward  life  which  Mr.  Bierce 
believes  are  essential  to  any  young  author  before 
he  can  hope  for  success — and  it  is  only  fair 
to  infer  that  they  represent  his  own  personal 
views : 


AMBROSE  BIERCE  341 

He  should,  for  example,  forget  that  he  is  an  Ameri 
can  and  remember  that  he  is  a  Man.  He  should  be 
neither  Christian  nor  Jew,  nor  Buddhist,  nor  Ma 
hometan,  nor  Snake  Worshiper.  To  local  standards 
of  right  and  wrong  he  should  be  civilly  indifferent. 
In  the  virtues,  so  called,  he  should  discern  only  the 
rough  notes  of  a  general  expediency;  in  fixed  moral 
principles  only  time-saving  predecisions  of  cases  not 
yet  before  the  court  of  conscience.  Happiness  should 
disclose  itself  to  his  enlarging  intelligence  as  the  end 
and  purpose  of  life;  art  and  love  as  the  only  means 
to  happiness.  He  should  free  himself  of  all  doc 
trines,  theories,  etiquettes,  politics,  simplifying  his 
life  and  mind,  attaining  clarity  with  breadth  and 
unity  with  height.  To  him  a  continent  should  not 
seem  wide,  nor  a  century  long.  And  it  would  be  need 
ful  that  he  know  and  have  an  ever-present  conscious 
ness  that  this  is  a  world  of  fools  and  rogues,  blind 
with  superstition,  tormented  with  envy,  consumed  with 
vanity,  selfish,  false,  cruel,  cursed  with  illusions — 
frothing  mad ! 

Now  this  strikes  the  average  fair-minded  per 
son  as  a  rather  wholesale  indictment  of  what  on 
the  whole  has  proved  to  be  a  pretty  good  world 
to  live  in.  In  fact,  it  is  difficult  to  conceive  of 
any  one  honestly  and  literally  holding  so  ex 
treme  a  view  and  yet  of  his  own  volition  remain 
ing  in  such  an  unpleasant  place  any  longer  than 
the  time  required  to  obtain  the  amount  of  gun 
powder  or  strychnine  sufficient  for  an  effect- 


342  AMBROSE  BIERCE 

ive  exit.  But  of  course  Mr.  Bierce  does  not  find 
life  half  so  unpleasant  as  he  professes :  in  fact,  he 
gives  the  impression  of  hugely  enjoying  himself 
by  voluntarily  looking  out  upon  a  world  gro 
tesquely  distorted  by  the  lenses  of  his  imagina 
tion.  He  has  of  course  a  perfect  right  to  have 
as  much  or  as  little  faith  as  he  chooses  in  any 
human  religion  or  philosophy,  moral  doctrine  or 
political  code — only  it  is  well  when  studying  Mr. 
Bierce  as  a  satirist  and  reformer  to  understand 
clearly  his  limitations  in  this  respect  and  to  dis 
count  his  view  accordingly.  It  is  well,  for  in 
stance,  to  keep  in  mind,  when  reading  some  of 
his  scathing  lines  directed  at  small  offenders  who 
at  most  have  left  the  world  not  much  worse  off 
for  having  lived  in  it,  that  Mr.  Bierce  once 
eulogized  that  wholesale  destroyer  of  faith,  Rob 
ert  Ingersoll,  as :  "a  man  who  taught  all  the  vir 
tues  as  a  duty  and  a  delight — who  stood,  as  no 
other  man  among  his  countrymen  has  stood,  for 
liberty,  for  honor,  for  good  will  toward  men,  for 
truth  as  it  was  given  him  to  see  it." 

To  the  present  writer  there  is  much  that  is 
keenly  irritating  in  Mr.  Bierce's  satiric  verse  for 
the  reasons  above  implied.  It  is,  of  course,  highly 
uncritical  to  find  fault  with  a  writer  for  no  bet 
ter  reason  than  because  you  find  yourself  out  of 
harmony  with  his  religious  and  moral  faith,  or 
his  lack  of  it — for  an  author's  personal  beliefs 


AMBROSE  BIERCE  343 

should  have  no  bearing  upon  the  artistic  value 
of  what  he  produces.  But  putting  aside  personal 
prejudice,  it  may  be  said  in  all  fairness  that  Mr. 
Bierce  made  a  mistake  in  giving  a  permanent  form 
to  so  large  a  body  of  his  fugitive  verses.  It  is 
not  quite  true  that  satiric  poetry  is  read  with  the 
same  interest  after  the  people  at  whom  it  was 
directed  are  forgotten.  Aristophanes  and  Horace 
and  Juvenal  cannot  be  greatly  enjoyed  to-day 
without  a  good  deal  of  patient  delving  for  the 
explanation  of  local  and  temporal  allusions ;  and 
in  modern  times  Pope's  Dunciad,  for  instance,  is 
probably  to-day  the  least  important  and  the  least 
read  of  all  his  writings.  It  is  impossible  to  take 
much  interest  in  vitriolic  attacks  made  twenty 
years  ago  upon  various  obscure  Californians 
whose  names  mean  nothing  at  all  to  the  world  at 
large.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  any  one  can  un 
derstand  and  enjoy  the  sweeping  irony  as  well 
as  the  sheer  verbal  cleverness  of  a  parody  like  the 
following : 

A  RATIONAL  ANTHEM 

My  country,  'tis  of  thee, 
Sweet  land  of  felony, 

Of  thee  I  sing — 
Land  where  my  fathers  fried 
Young  witches  and  applied 
Whips  to  the  Quaker's  hide 

And  made  him  spring. 


344.  AMBROSE  BIERCE 

My   knavish   country,  thee, 
Land  where  the  thief  is  free, 

Thy  laws  I  love; 
I  love  thy  thieving  bills 
That  tap  the  people's  tills ; 
I  love  thy  mob  whose  will's 

All  laws  above. 

Let  Federal  employees 

And  rings  rob  all  they  please, 

The  whole  year  long. 
Let  office-holders  make 
Their  piles  and  judges  rake 
Our  coin.     For  Jesus'  sake, 

Let's  all  go  wrong! 

One  is  tempted  to  devote  considerably  more 
space  than  is  warranted  to  that  extremely  clever 
collection  of  satiric  definitions,  The  Devil's  Dic 
tionary.  It  represents  a  deliberate  pose  con 
sistently  maintained,  it  is  pervaded  with  a  spirit 
of  what  a  large  proportion  of  readers  in  a  Chris 
tian  country  would  pronounce  irreverent,  it  tells 
us  nothing  new  and  can  hardly  be  conceived  of  as 
an  inspiration  for  higher  and  nobler  living.  But 
it  is  undeniably  entertaining  reading.  Almost 
any  one  must  smile  over  such  specimens  as  the  fol 
lowing,  taken  almost  at  random: 

MONDAY,  n.    In  Christian  countries,  the  day  after  the 
baseball  game. 


AMBROSE  BIERCE  345 

BACCHUS,  n.    A  convenient  deity  invented  by  the  an 
cients  as  an  excuse  for  getting  drunk. 
POSITIVE,  adj.    Mistaken  at  the  top  of  one's  voice. 

But  it  is  as  a  writer  of  short  stories  that  Mr. 
Bierce's  future  fame  rests  upon  a  firm  foundation. 
It  is  not  too  much  to  say  that  within  his  own 
chosen  field — the  grim,  uncompromising  horror 
story,  whether  actual  or  supernatural — he  stands 
among  American  writers  second  only  to  Edgar 
Allan  Foe.  And  this  is  all  the  more  remarkable 
when  we  consider  his  expressed  scorn  of  new  books 
and  modern  methods  and  his  implied  indifference 
to  the  development  of  modern  technique.  He  does 
understand  and  consciously  seeks  for  that  unity 
of  effect  which  is  the  foundation  stone  of  every 
good  short  story ;  yet  in  sheer  technical  skill  there 
is  scarcely  one  among  the  recognized  masters  of 
the  short  story  to-day,  Mr.  Kipling,  for  instance, 
and  the  late  O.  Henry,  Jack  London  and  a  score 
of  his  contemporaries,  from  whom  he  might  not 
learn  something  to  his  profit.  What  Mr.  Bierce's 
habits  of  workmanship  may  be  the  present  writer 
does  not  happen  to  know ;  it  is  possible  that  he  has 
always  striven  as  hard  to  build  an  underlying 
structure,  a  preliminary  scaffolding,  for  each  story 
as  ever  Edgar  Allan  Poe  did.  But  if  so  he  has 
been  singularly  successful  in  practising  the  art 
which  so  artfully  all  things  conceals.  He  gives 


346  AMBROSE  BIERCE 

the  impression  of  one  telling  a  story  with  a  cer 
tain  easy  spontaneity  and  attaining  his  results 
through  sheer  instinct.  He  seldom  attempts  any 
thing  like  a  unity  of  time  and  place;  and  many 
of  his  short  tales  have  the  same  fault  which  he 
criticises  in  the  modern  novel:  namely,  that  of 
having  a  panoramic  quality,  of  being  shown  to  us 
in  a  succession  of  more  or  less  widely  separated 
scenes  and  incidents. 

Nevertheless,  in  most  cases  his  stories  are  their 
own  best  justification.  We  may  not  agree  with 
the  method  that  he  has  chosen  to  use,  but 
we  cannot  escape  from  the  strange,  haunting 
power  of  them,  the  grim,  boding  sense  of  their 
having  happened — even  the  most  weird,  most 
supernatural,  most  grotesquely  impossible  of 
them — in  precisely  the  way  that  he  has  told 
them. 

The  stories,  such  of  them  at  least  as  really 
count  and  represent  Mr.  Bierce  at  his  best,  divide 
themselves  into  two  groups:  first,  the  Civil  War 
stories,  based  upon  his  own  four  years*  experi 
ence  as  a  soldier  during  the  Rebellion,  and  unsur 
passed  in  American  fiction  for  the  unsparing  clear 
ness  of  their  visualization  of  war.  And  secondly, 
the  frankly  supernatural  stories  contained  in  the 
volume  entitled  Can  Such  Things  Be? — stories  in 
which  the  setting  is  immaterial  because  if  such 
things  could  be  they  would  be  independent  of  time 


AMBROSE  BIERCE  347 

and  space.  The  war  stories  range  through  the 
entire  gamut  of  heroism,  suffering  and  carnage. 
They  are  stamped  in  all  their  physical  details 
with  a  pitiless  realism  unequaled  by  Stendhal  in 
the  famous  Waterloo  episode  in  the  Chartreuse  de 
Parme  and  at  least  unsurpassed  by  Tolstoy  or  by 
Zola.  Indeed,  there  is  nothing  fulsome  or  ex 
travagant  in  the  statement  that  has  more  than 
once  been  made  that  Mr.  Bierce  is  a  sort  of 
American  Maupassant.  And  what  is  most  re 
markable  about  these  stories  is  that  they  never 
fail  of  a  certain  crescendo  effect.  Keyed  as  they 
are  to  a  high  pitch  of  human  tragedy,  there  is  al 
ways  one  last  turn  of  the  screw,  one  crowning 
horror  held  in  reserve  until  the  crucial  moment. 
Take,  for  example,  "  A  Horseman  in  the  Sky." 
A  sentinel  whose  duty  it  is  to  watch  from  a  point 
of  vantage  overlooking  a  deep  gorge  and  a  vast 
plain  beyond,  to  see  that  no  scout  of  the  Southern 
army  shall  discover  a  trail  down  the  precipitous 
sides  of  the  opposite  slope,  suddenly  perceives  a 
solitary  horseman  making  his  way  along  the  verge 
of  the  precipice  within  easy  range  of  fire.  The 
sentinel  watches  and  hesitates ;  takes  aim  and  de 
lays  his  fire.  The  scene  shifts  with  the  discon 
certing  suddenness  of  a  modern  moving  picture 
and  we  see  the  sentinel  back  in  his  Southern  home 
at  the  outbreak  of  the  war ;  and  we  overhear  the 
controlled  bitterness  of  his  parting  with  his  South- 


348  AMBROSE  BIERCE 

ern  father  after  declaring  his  intention  to  fight 
for  the  Union.  A  modern  story  teller  would  con 
sider  this  shifting  of  scene  bad  art ;  nevertheless, 
Mr.  Bierce,  in  theatrical  parlance,  "  gets  it  over." 
Back  again  he  shifts  us  with  a  rush  to  the  lonely 
horseman,  shows  him  for  a  moment  motionless 
upon  the  brink  and  the  next  instant  launched  into 
space,  a  wonderful,  miraculous,  awe-inspiring  fig 
ure,  proudly  erect  upon  a  stricken  and  dying 
horse,  whose  legs  spasmodically  continue  their 
mad  gallop  throughout  the  downward  flight  to 
the  inevitable  annihilation  below.  This  in  itself, 
told  with  Ambrose  Bierce's  compelling  art,  is  suffi 
ciently  harrowing,  but  he  has  something  more  in 
reserve.  Listen  to  this: 

"  Did  you  fire  ?  "  the  sergeant  whispered. 

"  Yes." 

"At  what?" 

"  A  horse.  It  was  standing  on  yonder  rock — 
pretty  far  out.  You  see  it  is  no  longer  there.  It 
went  over  the  cliff." 

The  man's  face  was  white,  but  he  showed  no  other 
signs  of  emotion.  Having  answered,  he  turned  away 
his  eyes  and  said  no  more.  The  sergeant  did  not 
understand. 

"  See  here,  Druce,"  he  said,  after  a  moment's  si 
lence,  "  it's  no  use  making  a  mystery.  I  order  you 
to  report.  Was  there  anybody  on  the  horse  ?  " 

"  Yes." 


AMBROSE  BIERCE  349 

"Well?" 

"  My  father." 

And  again,  there  is  that  extraordinary  tour  de 
force  entitled  "  An  Occurrence  at  Owl  Creek 
Bridge."  It  is  the  story  of  a  spy  caught  and 
about  to  be  hanged  by  the  simple  expedient  of 
allowing  the  board  on  which  he  stands  to  tilt  up 
and  drop  him  between  the  cross-beams  of  the 
bridge.  The  story  is  of  considerable  length.  It 
details  with  singular  and  compelling  vividness 
what  follows  from  the  instant  that  the  spy  feels 
himself  dropped,  feels  the  rope  tighten  around 
his  neck  and  its  fibers  strain  and  snap  under  his 
weight.  His  plunge  into  the  stream  below,  his 
dash  for  life  under  cover  of  the  water,  his  flight, 
torn  and  bleeding,  through  thorns  and  brambles, 
his  miraculous  dodging  of  outposts  and  his  pass 
ing  unscathed  through  volleys  of  rapid  fire,  all 
read  like  a  hideous  nightmare — and  so  in  fact  they 
are,  because  the  entire  story  of  his  rush  for  safety 
lasting  long  hours  and  days  in  reality  is  accom 
plished  in  a  mere  fraction  of  time,  the  instant  of 
final  dissolution — because,  as  it  happened,  the 
rope  did  not  break  and  at  the  moment  that  he 
thought  he  had  attained  safety  his  body  ceased 
to  struggle  and  dangled  limply  beneath  the  Owl 
Creek  Bridge.  Variations  upon  this  theme  of  the 
rapidity  of  human  thought  in  the  moment  of 


350  AMBROSE  BIERCE 

death  are  numerous.  There  is,  for  instance,  a 
memorable  story  by  Morgan  Robertson  called,  if 
memory  is  not  at  fault,  "  From  the  Main  Top," 
in  which  a  lifetime  is  crowded  into  the  fraction  of 
time  required  for  the  action  of  gravity.  But  no 
one  has  ever  used  it  more  effectually  than  Mr. 
Bierce. 

But  it  is  in  his  supernatural  stories  that  Mr. 
Bierce  shows  even  more  forcefully  his  wizardry  of 
word  and  phrase,  his  almost  magnetic  power  to 
make  the  absurd,  the  grotesque,  the  impossible, 
carry  an  overwhelming  conviction.  He  will  tell 
you,  for  instance,  a  story  of  a  man  watching  at 
night  alone  by  the  dead  body  of  an  old  woman; 
a  cat  makes  its  way  into  the  room  and  springs 
upon  the  corpse;  and  to  the  man's  overwrought 
imagination  it  seems  as  though  that  dead  woman 
seized  the  cat  by  the  neck  and  flung  it  violently 
from  her.  "  Of  course  you  imagined  it,"  says 
the  friend  to  whom  he  afterwards  tells  the  tale. 
"  I  thought  so,  too,"  rejoins  the  man,  "  but  the 
next  morning  her  stiffened  fingers  still  held  a 
handful  of  black  fur." 

For  sheer  mad  humor  there  is  nothing  more 
original  than  the  tale  called  "  A  Jug  of  Syrup." 
A  certain  old  and  respected  village  grocer,  who 
through  a  lengthy  life  has  never  missed  a  day  at 
his  desk,  dies  and  his  shop  is  closed.  One  night 
the  village  banker  and  leading  citizen  on  his  way 


AMBROSE  BIERCE  351 

home  drops  in  from  force  of  habit  at  the  grocery, 
finding  the  door  wide  open,  and  buys  a  jug  of 
syrup,  absent-mindedly  forgetting  that  the  grocer 
who  serves  him  has  been  dead  three  weeks.  The 
jug  is  a  heavy  weight  to  carry;  yet  when  he 
reaches  home  he  has  nothing  in  his  hand.  The 
tale  spreads  like  wildfire  through  the  village  and 
the  next  night  a  vast  throng  is  assembled  in  front 
of  the  brightly  lit-up  grocery,  breathlessly  watch 
ing  the  shadowy  form  of  the  deceased  methodically 
casting  up  accounts.  One  by  one,  they  pluck  up 
courage  and  make  their  way  into  the  grocery — all 
but  the  banker.  Riveted  to  the  spot  by  the  gro 
tesque  horror  of  the  sight  he  stands  and  watches, 
while  pandemonium  breaks  loose.  To  him  in  the 
road  the  shop  is  still  brilliantly  lighted  but  to 
those  who  have  gone  within  it  presents  the  dark 
ness  of  eternal  night  and  in  their  unreasoning  fear 
they  kick  and  scratch  and  bite  and  trample  upon 
one  another  with  the  primordial  savageness  of  the 
mob.  And  all  the  while  the  shadowy  figure  of  the 
dead  grocer  continues  undisturbed  to  balance  his 
accounts. 

It  is  a  temptation  to  linger  beyond  all  reason 
over  one  after  another  of  these  extraordinary  and 
haunting  imaginings,  such  for  instance,  as  "  Mox- 
on's  Master,"  in  which  an  inventor,  having  made  a 
a  mechanical  chess-player,  makes  the  mistake  of 
beating  it  at  the  game  and  is  promptly  strangled 


352  AMBROSE  BIERCE 

to  death  by  the  revengeful  puppet  of  his  own  crea 
tion.  But  it  is  impossible  to  do  justice  to  all 
these  stories  separately  and  it  remains  only  to 
single  out  one  typical  example  in  which  perhaps 
he  reached  the  very  pinnacle  of  his  strange  fan 
tastic  genius,  "  The  Death  of  Halpin  Frayser." 
The  theme  of  the  story  is  this:  it  is  sufficiently 
horrible  to  be  confronted  with  a  disembodied 
spirit,  but  there  is  one  degree  of  horror  beyond 
this,  namely,  to  have  to  face  the  reanimated  body 
of  some  one  long  dead  from  whom  the  soul  has 
departed — because,  so  Mr.  Bierce  tells  us,  with  the 
departure  of  the  soul  all  natural  affection,  all 
kindliness  has  departed  also,  leaving  only  the  base 
instincts  of  brutality  and  revenge.  Now  in  the 
case  of  Halpin  Frayser,  it  happens  that  the  body 
which  he  is  fated  to  encounter  under  these  hide 
ously  unnatural  conditions  is  that  of  his  own 
mother;  and  in  a  setting  as  curiously  and  poetic 
ally  unreal  as  any  part  of  "  Kubla  Khan  "  he  is 
forced  to  realize  that  this  mother  whom  he  had 
in  life  worshiped  as  she  worshiped  him  is  now,  in 
spite  of  her  undiminished  beauty,  a  foul  and 
bestial  thing  intent  only  upon  taking  his  life.  In 
all  imaginative  literature  it  would  be  difficult  to 
find  a  parallel  for  this  story  in  sheer,  unadulter 
ated  hideousness. 

Mr.  Ambrose  Bierce  as  a  story  teller  can  never 
achieve  a   wide   popularity,   at   least   among   the 


AMBROSE  BIERCE  353 

Angle-Saxon  race.  His  writings  have  too  much 
the  flavor  of  the  hospital  and  the  morgue.  There 
is_ja  stale  odor  of  moldy  cerements  about  them. 
But  to  the  connoisseur  of  what  is  rare,  unique 
and  very  perfect  in  any  branch  of  fiction  he  must 
appeal  strongly  as  one  entitled  to  hearty  recogni 
tion  as  an  enduring  figure  in  American  letters. 
No  matter  how  strongly  he  may  offend  individual 
convictions  and  prejudices  with  the  flippant  ir 
reverence  of  his  satiric  writings,  it  is  easy  to  for 
give  him  all  this  and  much  more  besides  for  the 
sake  of  any  single  one  of  a  score  or  more  of  his 
best  stories. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 

The  following  bibliography  of  the  writers  discussed 
in  the  present  volume  does  not  pretend  to  be  ex 
haustive.  It  has  taken  no  heed  of  the  occasional, 
and  in  some  cases  the  abundant,  contributions  these 
authors  have  made  to  periodical  literature.  It  has 
not  attempted  to  indicate  translations  into  foreign 
languages  (although  in  some  cases,  notably  Marion 
Crawford  and  Kate  Douglas  Wiggin,  such  translations 
have  been  numerous  and  of  interesting  diversity),  nor 
to  collect  the  critical  studies  by  foreign  critics.  It 
does  give  a  convenient  chronological  list  of  the  pub 
lished  volumes  of  each  author,  together  with  the  pub 
lisher;  a  list  of  critical  or  biographical  articles  for  the 
purpose  of  further  study,  and  a  small  collection  of 
reviews  of  the  more  important  novels.  Its  main  pur 
pose  is  to  be  suggestive  rather  than  final;  and  to  in 
dicate,  by  what  it  gives,  the  sources  from  which 
readers  and  students  of  contemporary  fiction  may, 
if  they  choose,  glean  further  information. 


GERTRUDE  ATHERTON 

I.    PUBLISHED    WORKS 

The  DoomsTvoman,  1892  (Continental;  new  ed.,  Lane). 
Before  the  Gringo  Came,  1892  (Continental). 
A  Whirl  Asunder,  1895  (Stokes). 
Patience  Sparhawk  and  Her  Times,  1897  (Lane). 
His  Fortunate  Grace,  1897  (Lane). 
355 


356  BIBLIOGRAPHY 

American  Wives  and  English  Husbands,  1898  (Dodd, 
Mead). 

The  Californians,  1898  (Lane). 

A  Daughter  of  the  Fine,  1899  (Lane). 

The  Valiant  Runaways,  1899  (Dodd,  Mead). 

Senator  North,  1900  (Lane). 

The  Aristocrats,  1901   (Lane). 

The  Conqueror,  1902  (Macmillan). 

The  Splendid  Idle  Forties  (revised  and  enlarged 
version  of  Before  the  Gringo  Came),  1902  (Mac 
millan). 

A  Few  of  Hamilton's  Letters,  1903  (Macmillan). 

Rulers  of  Kings,  1904  (Harper). 

The  Bell  in  the  Fog,  1905  (Harper). 

The  Traveling  Thirds,  1905  (Harper). 

Rezdnov,  1906  (Authors'  and  Newspapers'  Assoc.). 

Ancestors,  1907  (Harper). 

The  Gorgeous  Isle,  1908  (Doubleday). 

The  Ivory  Tower,  1910  (Macmillan). 

II.    CRITICAL   ESTIMATES,   ETC. 

Academy,  "  Mrs.  Atherton  and  Her  Work/'  55,  431. 
Armes,   Ethel,  Article   on   Mrs.   Atherton,  Nat'l  M. 

(Boston),  21,  407. 
Haskins,   E.   F.,  Study   of   Gertrude   Atherton,  Lit. 

World  (Boston),  35,  317. 

III.    SEPARATE  REVIEWS 

American    Wives   and   English   Husbands,   reviewed, 

Dial,  25,  75;  Sat.  Rev.,  85,  501 ;  Spectator,  80,  450. 
Ancestors,  reviewed,  Athenaeum,  '07,  2,  600;  Current 

Lit.,  44,  224;  Nation,  85,  377;  North  Amer.  Rev., 

186,  607. 
The  Bell  in  the  Fog,  reviewed,  Academy,  68,   127; 

Athenceum,  '05,  1,  238. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY  357 

The  Calif  ornians,  reviewed,  Dial,  25,  305. 

The  Conqueror,  reviewed,  Academy,  62,  530;  Athe 
naeum,  '02,  2,  87;  F.  J.  Gregg,  Book  Buyer,  24, 
219;  W.  H.  Edwards,  Bookman,  15,  255;  J.  P. 
Mowbray,  Critic,  40,  501. 

A  Daughter  of  the  Vine,  reviewed,  Academy,  56,  359- 

The  Doomswoman,  reviewed,  Athenaeum,  '08,  2,  784. 

The  Gorgeous  Isle,  reviewed,  Athenaeum,  '08,  2,  640; 
Current  Lit.,  46. 

Patience  Sparhawk,  reviewed,  Sat.  Rev.,  84,  72 ; 
Spectator,  78,  595. 

Rezdnov,  reviewed,  Academy,  71,  502;  Athenaeum,  '06, 
2,  687 ;  Current  Lit.,  42,  229. 

Rulers  of  Kings,  reviewed,  Athenaeum,  '04,  1,  746; 
Bookman,  19,  311;  O.  H.  Dunbar,  Critic,  44,  471; 
W.  M.  Payne,  Dial,  37,  40;  Independent,  57,  453; 
E.  Hoyt,  Lamp,  28,  507. 

Senator  North,  reviewed,  Academy,  59,  241 ;  Athe 
naeum,  '00,  2,  307;  Bookman,  11,  588;  W.  M. 
Payne,  Dial,  29,  126;  Edin.  Rev.,  193,  158;  Lip- 
pincott,  68,  351. 

The  Splendid  Idle  Forties,  reviewed,  Athenaeum,  '03, 
1,  77. 

The  Tower  of  Ivory,  reviewed,  Current  Lit.,  48,  457. 

The  Traveling  Thirds,  reviewed,  Academy,  69,  1263; 
Athenaeum,  '05,  2,  793;  Current  Lit.,  40,  223. 

AMBROSE  BIERCE 

I.    PUBLISHED    WORKS 

Tales  of  Soldiers  and  Civilians,   1892    (U.   S.  Book 

Co.). 
The    Monk    and    the    Hangman's    Daughter,    1892 

(Schulte). 

Can  Such  Things  Be?  1894  (Cassell). 
Black  Beetles  in  Amber,  1895  (Johnson  and  Emigh). 


358  BIBLIOGRAPHY 

In  the  Midst  of  Life  (reissue  of  Tales  of  Soldiers  and 

Civilians'),  1898  (Putnam). 
The  Cynic's  Word  Book,  1906  (Doubleday). 
Collected  Works  of  Ambrose  Bierce,  ten  vols.,  1909- 

11  (Neale  Pub.  Co.). 

II.    CRITICAL    ESTIMATES,   ETC. 

Bookman,  "  The  Prophetic  Power  of  Bierce,"  30,  120. 
Current  Literature,  "  The  Underground  Reputation  of 

Bierce,"  47,  279- 
Current  Literature,  Personal  Sketch  of  Bierce,  23,  405. 

III.    SEPARATE  REVIEWS 

In   the  Midst  of  Life,  reviewed,  Bookman,  7,  257; 
Critic,  29,  266;  Nation,  66,  235. 

ROBERT  W.  CHAMBERS 

I.    PUBLISHED    WORKS 

In  the  Quarter,  1894  (Neely). 

A  King  in  Yellow,  1894  (Neely);  1902  (Harper). 

The  Red  Republic,  1895  (Putnam). 

The  Maker  of  Moons,  1896  (Putnam). 

A  King  and  a  Few  Dukes,  1896  (Putnam). 

With  the  Band,  A  Book  of  Ballads,  1897  (Stone  and 

Kimball). 

The  Mystery  of  Choice,  1897  (Appleton). 
Ashes  of  Empire,  1898  (Stokes). 
Lorraine,  1898  (Harper). 
The  Haunts  of  Men,  1898  (Stokes). 
Outsiders;  An  Outline,  1899  (Stokes). 
The  Conspirators,  1900  (Lane). 
A  Cambric  Mask,  1900  (Stokes). 
Cardigan,  1901   (Harper). 
The  Maid-at-Arms,  1902  (Harper). 
Outdoorland,  1902  (Harper). 


BIBLIOGRAPHY  359 

The  Maids  of  Paradise,  1903  (Harper). 

Orchardland,  1903   (Harper). 

A  Young  Man  in  a  Hurry,  1904  (Harper). 

In  Search  of  the  Unknown,  1904  (Harper). 

Riverland,  1904  (Harper). 

The  Reckoning,  1905  (Appleton). 

lole,  1905   (Appleton). 

Forestland,  1905  (Appleton). 

A  Tracer  of  Lost  Persons,  1906  (Appleton). 

The  Fighting  Chance,  1906  (Appleton). 

Mountainland,  1906  (Appleton). 

The  Younger  Set,  1907  (Appleton). 

The  Tree  of  Heaven,  1907  (Appleton). 

Gardenland,  1907  (Appleton). 

Some  Ladies  in  Haste,  1908  (Appleton). 

The  Firing  Line,  1908  (Appleton). 

The  Special  Messenger,  1909  (Appleton). 

The  Danger  Mark,  1909  (Appleton). 

Hide  and  Seek  in  Forestland,  1909  (Appleton). 

The  Green  Mouse,  1910  (Appleton). 

Ailsa  Page,  1910  (Appleton). 

The  Adventures  of  a  Modest  Man,  1911  (Appleton). 

The  Common  Law,  1911  (Appleton). 

II.    CRITICAL   ESTIMATES,  ETC. 

Book  News,  Sketch  of  Chambers,  20,  231. 

Current  Literature,  "  The  Work  of  Robert  Cham 
bers,"  34,  111. 

Harper's  Weekly,  Sketch  of  Chambers,  46,  1389. 

Harper's  Weekly,  "  Chambers  at  Home,"  45,  904. 

Haskins,  E.  F.,  "  Robert  W.  Chambers,"  Lit.  World 
(Boston),  35,  189. 

Hughes,  Rupert,  "  Robert  W.  Chambers,"  Book  News, 
25,  73. 

Marshall,  M.  M.,  Sketch  of  Chambers,  Cosmopolitan, 
50,  708. 


360  BIBLIOGRAPHY 

III.    SEPARATE  REVIEWS 

Ailsa  Page,  reviewed,  Current  Lit.,  50,  108. 

Ashes  of  Empire,  reviewed,  Academy,  56,  159- 

The    Cambric   Mask,    reviewed,   Academy,    58,   273; 

Saturday  Rev.,  89,  338. 
Cardigan,  reviewed,  Athenaeum,  '01,  2,  382;  W.  M. 

Payne,  Dial,  31,  366;  Nation,  74,  195. 
The  Danger  Mark,  reviewed,  Current  Lit.,  48,  110; 

Spectator,  104,  432. 
The  Fighting  Chance,  reviewed,  Academy,  72,   121; 

Athenaeum,  '07,  1,  193;  Current  Lit.,  41,  585;  Na- 

tion,  83,  246. 
The  Firing  Line,  reviewed,  Athenaeum,  '09,  1,  403; 

Current  Lit.,  45,  695. 
Haunts    of    Men,    reviewed,    Academy,    69,     1315; 

Athenaeum,  '06,  1,  75. 
lole,  reviewed,  Academy,  71,  286. 
A  King  and  a  Few  Dukes,  reviewed,  Spectator,  77,  50. 
The  Maid-at-Arms,  reviewed,  Athenaeum,  '03,  2,  446. 
The  Maids  of  Paradise,  reviewed,  Independent,  55, 

2579;  James  MacArthur,  Harper's  W.,  47,  1881. 
Outsiders,  reviewed,  Athenaeum,  '00,  2,  184;  Saturday 

Rev.,  89,  338. 

The  Reckoning,  reviewed,  Academy,  69,  1075;  Athe 
naeum,  '05,  2,  504;  Current  Lit.,  39,  689- 
The  Special  Messenger,  reviewed,  Athenaeum,  '09,  2, 

522. 
The  Tracer  of  Lost  Persons,  reviewed,  Academy,  72, 

345;  Athenaeum,  '07,  1,  574. 
The  Tree  of  Heaven,  reviewed,  Athenaeum,  '08,  1,  895 ; 

Nation,  84,  544. 
The  Younger  Set,  reviewed,  Athenaeum,  '07,  2,  580; 

Nation,  85,  188. 
A   Young  Man  in  a  Hurry,  reviewed,  Academy,  70, 

230. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY  361 


WINSTON  CHURCHILL 

I.    PUBLISHED  WORKS. 

The  Celebrity,  1898  (Macmillan). 

Richard  Carvel,  1899  (Macmillan). 

The  Crisis,  1901   (Macmillan). 

The  Crossing,  1904  (Macmillan). 

Coniston,  1906  (Macmillan). 

Mr.  Cr ewe's  Career,  1908  (Macmillan). 

A  Modern  Chronicle,  1910  (Macmillan). 

II.    CRITICAL   ESTIMATES,   ETC. 

Bookman,  "  Anachronisms  in  The  Crisis  "  14,  462. 
Current  Literature,  Sketch  of  Churchill,  27,  118. 
Dixon,   J.    M.,   "  Real   Persons   and    Places   in    The 

Crisis,"  Bookman,  14,  17. 
Haskins,  E.  F.,  "  The  Literary  Career  of  Churchill," 

Famous  Authors,  317-332. 
Johnson,  S.,  "  Churchill  the  Novelist  and  His  Novels 

in  Politics,"  World's  Work,  17,  11016. 
Mabie,  Hamilton  Wright,  Article  based  on  Coniston, 

North  Amer.  Rev.,  183,  415. 
Pratt,  C.  A.,  "  Churchill  and  the  Epic  Novel,"  Critic, 

39,  75. 
Whitelock,    W.    W.,    Personal    Sketch    of    Churchill, 

Critic,  40,  135. 
World's  Work,  "  Churchill  and  The  Crisis,"  2,  1003. 

III.    SEPARATE   REVIEWS 

Coniston,   reviewed,  Athenaeum,  '06,  2,  97;   Current 

Lit.,  41,  346;  Nation,  83,  38. 
The  Crisis,  reviewed,  Academy,  60,  514;  Athenaeum, 

'01,   1,  784;   C.   T.   Brady,  Book  Buyer,  22,  483; 

F.  Dredd,  Bookman,  13,  345;  Current  Lit.,  30,  659; 

Independent,  53,  1435. 


362  BIBLIOGRAPHY 

The  Crossing,  reviewed,  Academy,  64,  49;  Athenceum, 
'04,  2,  266;  A.  B.  Maurice,  Bookman,  19,  607;  O.  H. 
Dunbar,  Critic,  45,  187;  M.  K.  Ford,  Current  Lit., 
37,  36;  W.  H.  Payne,  Dial,  37,  38;  Independent, 
57,  41;  E.  Hoyt,  Lamp,  28,  507;  Nation,  79,  120; 
A.  F.  Hancock,  Outlook,  77,  753 ;  Reader,  4,  345. 

Mr.  Crewe's  Career,  reviewed,  Athenceum,  '08,  1,  723; 
Current  Lit.,  45,  109;  Nation,  86,  447. 

A  Modern  Chronicle,  reviewed,  Academy,  78,  397; 
Athenceum,  '10,  1,  576;  Bookman,  31,  306;  Cath. 
World,  91,  391;  Car.  Li*.,  49,  100;  W.  M.  Payne, 
Dial,  48,  395;  Independent,  68,  1037;  -Li*.  Dig.,  40, 
927;  Nation,  90,  318;  Outlook,  94,  956;  #et>.  o/ 
Ket>.,  41,  636;  So*.  Rev.,  109,  633;  Spectator,  101, 
984. 

Richard  Carvel,  reviewed,  W.  E.  Simonds,  Atlantic, 
85,  410. 

FRANCIS  MARION  CRAWFORD 

I.    PUBLISHED  WORKS 

Mr.  Isaacs,  1882  (Macmillan). 

Dr.  Claudius,  1883  (Macmillan). 

A  Roman  Singer,  1884  (Houghton,  Mifflin). 

To  Leeward,  1884  (Houghton,  Mifflin). 

An  American  Politician,  1884  (Macmillan). 

Zoroaster,  1885  (Macmillan). 

The  Tale  of  a  Lonely  Parish,  1886  (Macmillan). 

Marsio's  Crucifix,  1887  (Macmillan). 

Saracinesca,  1887  (Macmillan). 

Paul  Patoff,  1887  (Macmillan). 

With  the  Immortals,  1888  (Macmillan). 

Greifenstein,  1889  (Macmillan). 

Sant'  Ilario,  1889  (Macmillan). 

/4  Cigarette  Maker's  Romance,  1890  (Macmillan). 

Khaled,  1891  (Macmillan). 


BIBLIOGRAPHY  363 

The  Witch  of  Prague,  1891   (Macmillan). 

The  Three  Fates,  1891   (Macmillan). 

Children  of  the  King,  1892  (Macmillan). 

Don  Orsino,  1892  (Macmillan). 

Marion  Darche,  1893  (Macmillan). 

The  Novel:  What  It  Is,  1893  (Macmillan). 

Pietro  Ghisleri,  1893   (Macmillan). 

Katharine  Lander  dale,  1894  (Macmillan). 

The  Upper  Berth,  189*  (Putnam). 

Love  in  Idleness,  1894  (Macmillan). 

Casa  Braccio,  1895  (Macmillan). 

Constantinople,  1895  (Scribner). 

The  Ralstons,  1895  (Macmillan). 

Adam  Johnson's  Son,  1896  (Macmillan). 

Taquisara,  1896   (Macmillan). 

Corleone:  A  Tale  of  Sicily,  1896  (Macmillan). 

A  Rose  of  Yesterday,  1897  (Macmillan). 

Ave  Roma  Immortalis,  1898  (Macmillan). 

Via  Crucis,  1899  (Macmillan). 

In  the  Palace  of  the  King,  1900  (Macmillan). 

Rulers  of  the  South,  1900  (Macmillan). 

Marietta,  1901   (Macmillan). 

Cecilia;  A  Story  of  Modern  Rome,  1902  (Macmillan). 

The  Heart  of  Rome,  1903  (Macmillan). 

Man  Overboard,  1903  (Macmillan). 

The  Life  of  Pope  Leo  XIII,  1904  (Macmillan). 

Whosoever  Shall  Offend,  1904  (Macmillan). 

Fair  Margaret:  A  Portrait,  1905   (Macmillan). 

Salve  Venetia,  1905  (Macmillan). 

A  Lady  of  Rome,  1906  (Macmillan). 

Arethusa,  1907  (Macmillan). 

The  Little  City  of  Hope,  1907  (Macmillan). 

The  Primadonna,  1908  (Macmillan). 

The  Diva's  Ruby,  1908  (Macmillan). 

The  White  Sister,  1909  (Macmillan). 

Wandering  Ghosts,  1911  (Macmillan). 


364  BIBLIOGRAPHY 

II.    CRITICAL    ESTIMATES,   ETC. 

Academy,  "  Crawford  at  Home/'  53,  23. 

Blackwood's,  Critical  Article  on  Crawford  the  Novel 
ist,  136,  296. 

Bookman,  "  Crawford's  Workshop,"  22,  443. 

Brett,  G.  P.,  "  Crawford  the  Novelist  and  Historian," 
Outlook,  91,  915. 

Bridges,  Robert,  Interview  with  Crawford,  McClure's, 
4,  316. 

Carpenter,  H.  T.,  "  Crawford  and  His  Home  at 
Sorrento,"  Munsey's,  41,  547. 

Church  Quarterly,  "  The  Novels  of  Marion  Craw 
ford,"  30,  29- 

Garrett,  C.  H.,  "  A  Talk  with  Crawford,"  Lamp,  27, 
216. 

Hale,  Louise  C.,  "Crawford's  Rome,"  Bookman,  15, 
350. 

Meredith,  G.  E.,  "  The  Latest  Novels  of  Crawford," 
Church  Review,  52,  343. 

Critic,  Interview  with  Crawford,  21,  302. 

Critic,  Crawford's  Literary  Views,  22,  97. 

Edinburgh  Review,  "  The  Novels  of  Marion  Craw 
ford,"  204,  61. 

Egan,  M.  F.,  Critical  Study  of  Crawford,  Amer. 
Cath.  Quart.,  17,  621. 

Faust,  A.  J.,  "  Two  New  Novelists  "  (Crawford  and 
A.  S.  Hardy). 

Lanier,  Ch.  D.,  "  Francis  Marion  Crawford,  Novelist," 
Rev.  of  Rev.,  6,  712. 

Munsey's,  "  Crawford  and  His  Work,"  17,  85. 

Nation,  "  Chronological  List  of  Crawford's  Works," 
88,  380. 

Ouida,  "  The  Italian  Novels  of  Crawford,"  Nine 
teenth  Century,  42,  719;  same  article,  Liv.  Age, 
215,  829. 

Outlook,  "  The  Career  of  Crawford,"  91,  856. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY  365 

Review  of  Reviews,  "  Crawford  the  Novelist,"  39,  636. 

Robinson,  Janetta  N.,  "  A  Study  of  Crawford,"  West 
minster  Rev.,  137,  379. 

Stimpson,  M.  S.,  Personal  Sketch  of  Crawford,  New 
Eng.  Mag.,  n.s.,  34,  572. 

Trent,  W.  P.,  "  Marion  Crawford,"  Suwanee  Mag.,  2, 
239- 

Vedder,  H.  C.,  American  Writers,  New  York,  1895. 

Warner  Library,  7,  4151. 

III.    SEPARATE   REVIEWS 

Arethusa,  reviewed,  Academy,  73,  251 ;  Current  Lit., 

44,  338;  Nation,  85,  495. 
Cecilia,  reviewed,  Athenaeum,  '02,  2,  679;  Bookman, 

16,378;  Nation,  76,  40. 
Children  of  the  King,  reviewed,  Academy,  43,  368 ; 

Athenaeum,  '93,  1,  277. 
Corleone,  reviewed,  Spectator,  79,  776. 
A   Cigarette  Maker's  Romance,  reviewed,  Athenaeum, 

'90,  2,  539;  Nation,  51,  506. 
Dr.  Claudius,  reviewed,  Literary  World  (Boston),  14, 

187;  Nation,  36,  552;  Saturday  Review,  55,  844; 

Spectator,  56,  1552. 
Don  Orsino,  reviewed,  Academy,  43,  77;  Athenaeum, 

'92,  2,  699. 

Fair  Margaret,  reviewed,  Academy,  69,  1201;  Athe 
naeum,  '05,  2,  758;  Bookman,  22,  373;  Cath. 

World,  82,  837;  Indep.,  60,  111 ;  Lit.  Dig.,  32,  172; 

Pub.  Opin.,  40,  26;  Spectator,  96,  28. 
Greifenstein,  reviewed,  Academy,  35,  338;  Athenaeum, 

'89,  1,  50;  Blackwood,  145,  822. 
Heart  of  Rome,  reviewed,  Bookman,   18,  412;  Dial, 

36,  18;  Nation,  77,  391. 
In  the  Palace  of  the  King,  reviewed,  Academy,  59, 

417;  Athenaeum,  '00,  2,  577;  C.  Hovey,  Bookman, 

12,  347;  Nation,  72,  97. 


366  BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Mr.  Isaacs,  reviewed,  Academy,  22,  465;  Athenaeum, 
'82,  2,  809;  Literary  World  (Boston),  14,  6;  Na 
tion,  36,  151;  Saturday  Review,  55,  215;  Spectator, 
56,  191. 

Katharine  Lauderdale,  reviewed,  Athenaeum,  '94,  1, 
505. 

Khaled,  reviewed,  Academy,  40,  32;  Athenaeum,  '91, 
1,  728. 

Marzio's  Crucifix,  reviewed,  Academy,  32,  282; 
Athenaeum,  '87,  2,  865. 

Paul  Patoff,  reviewed,  Academy,  32,  420. 

Pietro  Ohisleri,  reviewed,  Athenaeum,  '93,  2,  125. 

A  Roman  Singer,  reviewed,  Nation,  38,  531. 

A  Rose  of  Yesterday,  reviewed,  Spectator,  78,  922. 

Sant'  Ilario,  reviewed,  Academy,  36,  147;  Athenaeum, 
'89,  2,  218;  Atlantic,  65,  122. 

Saracinesca,  reviewed,  Athenaeum,  '87,  1,  542. 

A  Tale  of  a  Lonely  Parish,  reviewed,  Atlantic,  57,  853. 

To  Leeward,  reviewed,  Atlantic,  53,  277;  Critic,  3, 
521;  Nation,  54,  193;  Spectator,  57,  381. 

The  Three  Fates,  reviewed,  Academy,  41,  561 ; 
Athenaeum,  '92,  1,  598;  Nation,  54,  457. 

Via  Crucis,  reviewed,  F.  Dredd,  Bookman,  11,  92; 
American  Catholic,  25,  402. 

Wandering  Ghosts,  reviewed,  Athenceum,  '11,  1,  443; 
Cath.  World,  93,  259- 

Whosoever  Shall  Offend,  reviewed,  Academy,  64,  385; 
Bookman,  20,  364;  Catholic  World,  80,  403;  Cur 
rent  Lit.,  37,  539- 

The  Witch  of  Prague,  reviewed,  Wm.  Sharp,  Academy, 
40,  193;  Athenceum,  '91,  2,  251. 

With  the  Immortals,  reviewed,  Athenaeum,  '88,  2,  126. 

Zoroaster,  reviewed,  Academy,  27,  416. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY  367 

ELLEN  GLASGOW 

I.    PUBLISHED  WORKS 

The  Descendant,  1897  (Harper). 

Phases  of  an  Inferior  Planet,  1898  (Harper). 

The  Voice  of  the  People,  1900  (Doubleday). 

The  Freeman  and  Other  Poems,  1902   (Doubleday). 

The  Battleground,  1902  (Doubleday). 

The  Deliverance,  1904  (Doubleday). 

The  Wheel  of  Life,  1906  (Doubleday). 

The  Ancient  Lam,  1908   (Doubleday). 

The  Romance  of  a  Plain  Man,  1909  (Doubleday). 

The  Miller  of  Old  Church,  1911  (Doubleday). 

II.    CRITICAL   ESTIMATES,   ETC. 

Book  News,  Sketch  of  Ellen  Glasgow,  19,  1. 

Current  Literature,  Personal  Sketch  of  Miss  Glas 
gow,  32,  623. 

Marcosson,  I.  F.,  "  The  Personal  Ellen  Glasgow/' 
Bookman,  29,  619. 

Outlook,  "  The  Deliverance  and  Harland's  My  Friend 
Prospero,"  76,  395. 

World's  Work,  "  Three  Novelists  of  Sincerity  and 
Charm,"  5,  2790. 

III.    SEPARATE  REVIEWS 

The   Ancient   Law,   reviewed,   Athenceum,    '08,    380; 

Bookman,  27,  59;  W.   M.   Payne,  Dial,   14,   134; 

Indep.,  64,  469;  Nation,  86,  152;  L.  C.  Willcox, 

North  Amer.   Rev.,    187,   444;    Outlook,   88,   511; 

Rev.  of  Rev.,  37,  761;  Sat.  Rev.,  105;  Spectator, 

100,  505. 
The  Battleground,  reviewed,  Athenceum,  '02,  1,  812; 

C.  Hovey,  Bookman,  15,  268 ;  Critic,  41,  279;  W.  M. 

Payne,  Dial,  32,  385. 


368  BIBLIOGRAPHY 

The  Deliverance,  reviewed,  Academy,  66,  273;  H.  W. 

Preston,  Atlantic,  93,  852;  Athenaeum,  '04>,  2,  201; 

E.  C.  Marsh,  Bookman,  19,  73;  Current  Lit.,  36, 

315;  W.  M.  Payne,  Dial,  36,  119;  Nation,  78,  234; 

Outlook,  76,  395. 
The  Miller  of  Old  Church,  reviewed,  W.  M.  Payne, 

Dial,  51,  51 ;  Lit.  Dig.,  43,  26;  Nation,  93,  33. 
The  Romance  of  a  Plain  Man,  reviewed,  Athenaeum, 

'09,  2,  424 ;  Current  Lit.,  47,  460. 
The  Voice  of  the  People,  reviewed,  Academy,  59,  133; 

Atlantic,   86,  416;   Athenaeum,   '00,   2,   179;   Book 

Buyer,  20,  308;  Bookman,  11,  397;  W.  M.  Payne, 

Dial,  29,  23;  Nation,  70,  402;  Saturday  Rev.,  90, 

180;  World's  Work,  5,  2791. 
The  Wheel  of  Life,  reviewed,  Athenaeum,  '06,  1,  420; 

Current  Lit.,  40,  338. 

"O.  HENRY" 

I.    PUBLISHED  WORKS 

Cabbages  and  Kings,  1905  (McClure,  Phillips). 
The  Four  Million,  1906  (McClure,  Phillips). 
The  Trimmed  Lamp,  1907  (McClure,  Phillips). 
The  Heart  of  the  West,  1907  (McClure,  Phillips). 
The  Gentle  Grafter,  1908  (Doubleday). 
The  Voice  of  the  City,  1908  (Doubleday). 
Roads  of  Destiny,  1909  (Doubleday). 
Strictly  Business,  1910  (Doubleday). 
Whirligigs,  1910  (Doubleday). 

II.    CRITICAL   ESTIMATES,   ETC. 

Bookman,    "  Biography   of   O.    Henry    (Chronicle)," 

32,  6;  32,  235;  32,  449. 
Bookman,   "  The   Personal   O.    Henry    (Chronicle)," 

29,  345 ;  29,  579. 
Bookman,  Sketch  of  O.  Henry  (Chronicle),  31,  456. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY  369 

Forman,  Justus  Miles,  "  O  Henry's  Shorter  Stories," 

North  Amer.  Rev.,  187,  781. 
Nathan,  G.  P.,  "  O.  Henry  in  His  Own  Bagdad," 

Bookman,  31,  477. 
Peck,  H.  T.,  "  Representative  American  Story  Tellers: 

O.  Henry,"  Bookman,  31,  131. 
Steger,  Peyton,  Life  of  0.  Henry  (in  press),  1911 

(Doubleday). 

III.    SEPARATE  REVIEWS 

Cabbages    and   Kings,    reviewed,    Stanhope    Searles, 

Bookman,  20,  561. 

The  Heart  of  the  West,  reviewed,  Nation,  85,  496. 
Strictly  Business,  reviewed,  Nation,  90,  348. 
The  Trimmed  Lamp,  reviewed,  Nation,  85,  16. 
The  Voice  of  the  City,  Nation,  87,  12. 
Whirligigs,  reviewed,  Independent,  69,  987;  Nationf 

91,  417. 

ROBERT  HERRICK 

I.    PUBLISHED  WORKS 

The  Man  Who  Wins,  1895  (Scribner). 

Literary  Love  Letters  and  Other  Stories,  1896 
(Scribner). 

The  Gospel  of  Freedom,  1898  (Macmillan). 

Love's  Dilemmas,  1898  (Stone). 

The  Web  of  Life,  1900  (Macmillan). 

The  Real  World,  1901   (Macmillan). 

Their  Child,  1903  (Macmillan). 

The  Common  Lot,  1904  (Macmillan). 

The  Memoirs  of  an  American  Citizen,  1905  (Mac 
millan)  . 

The  Master  of  the  Inn,  1908  (Macmillan). 

Together,  1908  (Macmillan). 

A  Life  for  a  Life,  1910  (Macmillan). 


870  BIBLIOGRAPHY 

II.    CRITICAL   ESTIMATES,  ETC. 

Howells,  W.  D.,  "The  Novels  of  Herrick,"  North 
Amer.  Rev.,  189,  812. 

III.    SEPARATE   REVIEWS 

The  Common  Lot,  reviewed,  Athenaeum,  '05,  1,  11; 

W.  M.  Payne,  Dial,  37,  311 ;  Nation,  79,  379;  Out 
look,  78,  461. 
A  Life  for  a  Life,  reviewed,  Athenaeum,  '10,  2,  64; 

Atlantic,  106,  814;  Cur.  Lit.,  49,  224;  W.  M.  Payne, 

Dial,  49,  39;  Independent,  69,  77;  Nation,  90,  586; 

Outlook,  95,  490;  Rev.  of  Rev.,  42,  123;  Sat.  Rev., 

110,  53. 
Memoirs  of  an  American  Citizen,  reviewed,  Critic,  47, 

476;  Nation,  81,  205. 
The  Real   World,  reviewed,   Critic,  40,   149;   F.  M. 

Mandeville,  Bookman,  Athenaeum,  '02,  1,  12. 
Together,  reviewed,   Academy,   75,   331 ;  Arena,   40, 

576;  W.  M.  Payne,  Dial,  45,  213;  Indep.,  65,  263; 

Lit.  Dig.,  37,  852;  Nation,  87,  96;  Outlook,  89, 

956;  Rev.  of  Rev.,  38,  508. 
The  Web  of  Life,  reviewed,  Athenaeum,  '00,  2,  245; 

Bookman,  12,  90;  Dial,  29,  124. 


FRANK  NORRIS 

I.    PUBLISHED  WORKS 

Yvernelle  (long  poem),  1892  (Lippincott). 

Moran   of   the   Lady   Letty,    1898    (Doubleday   and 

McC.)- 

McTeague,  1899  (Doubleday  and  McC.). 
Blix,  1899  (Doubleday  and  McC.). 
A  Man's  Woman,  1900  (Doubleday  and  McC.). 
The  Octopus,  1901  (Doubleday,  Page). 


BIBLIOGRAPHY  371 

The  Pit,  1903  (Doubleday,  Page). 

The  Responsibilities  of  a  Novelist,  1903  (Doubleday, 
Page). 

A  Deal  in  Wheat  and  Other  Stories,  1903  (Double- 
day,  Page). 

The  Complete  Works  of  Frank  Norris,  Golden  Gate 
Edition  (limited  to  one  hundred  numbered  sets), 
1903  (Doubleday,  Page). 

The  Third  Circle,  1909  (Lane). 

II.    CRITICAL   ESTIMATES,   ETC. 

Garland,    Hamlin,    "  The   Work   of   Frank    Norris," 

Critic,  42,  216. 
Goodrich,  Arthur,  "  Norris  the  Man,"  Current  Lit., 

34,  105. 
Howells,    W.    D.,    "  Norris    as    a    Novelist,"    North 

Amer.,  175,  769- 

Irwin,  Will,  Introduction  to  The  Third  Circle  (1909). 
Levick,  Milne  B.,  "  The  Literary  Work  of  Norris," 

Overland,  n.s.,  45,  504. 

Millard,  P.,  "Frank  Norris,"  Out  West,  18,  49. 
Preston,  H.  W.,  "  The  Novels  of  Norris,"  Atlantic, 

91,  691. 
Rainsford,  W.  S.,  "  Frank  Norris,"  World's  Work,  5, 

3276. 
Wister,  Owen,  Article  on  The  Pit,  World's  Work,  5, 

3133. 

III.    SEPARATE  REVIEWS 

Blix,  reviewed,  Academy,  59,  111. 

A    Deal    in    Wheat,    reviewed,    Academy,    65,    501 ; 

Athenaeum,  '03,  2,  613;  Bookman,  18,  311. 
McTeague,  reviewed,  Academy,  57,  746;  Athenaeum, 

'99,  2,  757. 
A  Man's  Woman,  reviewed,  Athenaeum,  '00,  2,  547; 

Critic,  36,  352;  Independent,  52,  611. 


372  BIBLIOGRAPHY 

The    Octopus,   reviewed,  Academy,   6l,   210;   B.   O. 

Flower,  in  Arena,  27,  547;  Athenaeum,  '01,  2,  447; 

H.    W.    Boynton,   Atlantic,    89,   708;    A.    S.    Van 

Westrum,  Book  Buyer,  22,  326;  Bookman,  13,  245; 

W.   M.   Payne,  Dial,  31,   136;   Indep.,   53,   1139; 

Overland,  n.s.,  37,  1050. 
The  Pit,  reviewed,  Academy,  64,  153;  Arena,  29,  440; 

Athenaeum,  '03,  2,  204;  A.  B.  Payne,  Bookman,  16, 

565;  Indep.,  55,  331;  Outlook,  73,  152. 
TAe  Third  Circle,  reviewed,  Academy,  77,  419. 

DAVID  GRAHAM  PHILLIPS 

I.    PUBLISHED  WORKS 

A  Woman  Ventures,  1902  (Stokes). 

Her  Serene  Highness,  1902  (Harper). 

The  Master  Rogue,  1903  (McClure). 

The  Golden  Fleece,  1903  (McClure). 

The  Great  God,  Success,  1903  (Stokes). 

The  Cost,  1904  (Bobbs,  Merrill). 

The  Plum  Tree,  1905  (Bobbs,  Merrill). 

The  Reign  of  Gilt,  1905  (Pott). 

The  Social  Secretary,  1905  (Bobbs,  Merrill). 

The  Deluge,  1905  (Bobbs,  Merrill). 

The  Fortune  Hunter,  1906  (Bobbs,  Merrill). 

The  Light-Fingered  Gentry,  1907  (Bobbs,  Merrill). 

The  Second  Generation,  1907  (Appleton). 

Old  Wives  for  New,  1908  (Appleton). 

The  Worth  of  a  Woman;  A  Play  in  Four  Acts,  1908 

(Appleton). 

The  Hungry  Heart,  1909  (Appleton). 
The  Fashionable  Adventures  of  Joshua  Craig,   1909 

(Appleton). 

White  Magic,  1910  (Appleton). 
The  Husband's  Story.  1910  (Appleton). 
The  Grain  of  Dust,  1911  (Appleton). 
The  Conflict,  1911  (Appleton). 


BIBLIOGRAPHY  373 

II.    CRITICAL   ESTIMATES,   ETC. 

American  Magazine,  "  Phillips  the  Fighter/'  71. 
Arena,  Personal  Sketch  of  Phillips,  38,  669- 
Bookman,  "  The  Literary  Work  of  Phillips,"  21,  342. 
Cosmopolitan,  "  Phillips  the  Fighter,"  51,  287. 
Critic,  "  David  Graham  Phillips,"  Sketch,  45,  8. 
Flower,  B.  O.,  "  A  Twentieth  Century  Novelist  of 
Democracy,"  Arena,  35,  252. 

III.    SEPARATE  REVIEWS 

The  Cost,  reviewed,  Arena,  32,  215;  Athenaeum,  '05, 
2,  366;  Nation,  79,  121. 

Golden  Fleece,  reviewed,  E.  Hoyt,  Lamp,  26,  429. 

A  Grain  of  Dust,  reviewed,  Independent,  70,  1066. 

The  Great  God  Success,  reviewed,  Athenaeum,  '02,  1, 
330;  Book  Buyer,  23,  230. 

The  Husband's  Story,  reviewed,  W.  M.  Payne,  Dial, 
49,  289;  Lit.  Dig.,  41,  704;  Nation,  91,  339;  N.  Y. 
Times,  15,  535. 

Old  Wives  for  New,  reviewed,  Arena,  39,  509;  Book 
man,  27,  495;  Cur.  Lit.,  44,  683;  W.  M.  Payne, 
Dial,  44,  350;  Indep.,  64,  808;  Nation,  86,  264; 
Outlook,  88,  838;  Putnam's,  4,  621;  Rev.  of  Rev., 
37,  762. 

The  Second  Generation,  reviewed,  Current  Lit.,  42, 
458;  Nation,  84,  85. 

The  Social  Secretary,  reviewed,  Critic,  48,  92. 


NEWTON  BOOTH  TARKINGTON 

I.    PUBLISHED  WORKS 

The  Gentleman  from  Indiana,  1899  (McClure). 
Monsieur  Beaucaire,  1900  (McClure). 


374  BIBLIOGRAPHY 

The  Two  Fanrevels,  1902  (McClure). 

Cherry,  1903  (Harper). 

In  the  Arena,  1905  (McClure). 

The  Conquest  of  Canaan,  1905  (Harper). 

The  Beautiful  Lady,  1905  (McClure). 

His  Own  People,  1907  (Doubleday). 

The  Guest  of  Quesney,  1908  (McClure). 

Beasley's  Christmas  Party,  1909  (Harper). 


II.    CRITICAL   ESTIMATES,   ETC. 

Book  News,  Sketch  of  Tarkington,  18,  325. 

Garrett,  C.  H.,  Article  on  Tarkington,  Outlook,  72, 

817. 
Maurice,  Arthur  Bartlett,  "  Representative  American 

Story  Tellers:   Booth   Tarkington,"  Bookman,  24, 

605. 

Personal  Sketch,  Critic,  36,  399. 
Personal  Sketch,  Current  Lit.,  30,  280. 
Personal  Sketch,  Harper's  Weekly,  46,  1773. 


III.    SEPARATE   REVIEWS 

The  Beautiful  Lady,  reviewed,  Bookman,  21,  615; 
Critic,  47,  286;  Cur.  Lit.,  39,  344;  Independent,  59, 
580;  Lit.  Dig.,  21,  93;  Rev.  of  Rev.,  32,  760. 

Cherry,  reviewed,  Athenaeum,  '04,  2,  234;  James  Mac- 
Arthur,  Harper's  W.,  47,  1961. 

The  Conquest  of  Canaan,  reviewed,  Athenceum,  '95,  2, 
829;  E.  C.  Marsh,  Bookman,  22,  517;  Critic,  48, 
286;  Cur.  Lit.,  40,  109;  W.  M.  Payne,  Dial,  40, 
155;  Indep.,  59,  1153;  Lit.  Dig.,  32,  495;  L.  C. 
Willcox,  North  Amer.  Rev.,  182,  926;  Outlook, 
81,708;  Reader,  7,  224. 

The  Gentleman  from  Indiana,  reviewed,  Academy,  58, 
469;  Saturday  Review,  89,  816. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY  375 

The  Guest  of  Quesney,  reviewed,  Athenaeum,  '08,  2, 
757;  E.  C.  Marsh,  Bookman,  28,  273;  Indep.,  65, 
1061;  W.  G.  Bowdoin,  Indep.,  65,  1464;  Outlook, 
90,  362 ;  Agnes  Repplier,  Outlook,  90,  700. 

His  Own  People,  reviewed,  Nation,  85,  400. 

In  the  Arena,  reviewed,  Academy,  68,  472;  Athenaeum, 
'05,  1,  589;  Bookman,  21,  188;  Critic,  46,  479; 
Outlook,  79,  450;  Sat.  Rev.,  99,  709- 

Monsieur  Beaucaire,  reviewed,  Athenceum,  '01,  656. 

The  Two  Vanrevels,  reviewed,  Athenaeum,  '02,  2,  791 ; 
W.  M.  Payne,  Dial,  33,  327. 


EDITH  WHARTON 

I.    PUBLISHED  WORKS 

The  Greater  Inclination,  1899  (Scribner). 
The  Touchstone,  1900  (Scribner). 
Crucial  Instances,  1901  (Scribner). 
The  Valley  of  Decision,  1902  (Scribner). 
Sanctuary,  1903  (Scribner). 

The  Descent  of  Man  and  Other  Stories,  1904  (Scrib 
ner). 

Italian  Villas  and  Their  Gardens,  1904  (Century). 
Italian  Backgrounds,  1905  (Scribner). 
The  House  of  Mirth,  1906  (Scribner). 
Madame  de  Treymes,  1907  (Scribner). 
The  Fruit  of  the  Tree,  1907  (Scribner). 
The  Hermit  and  the  Wild  Woman,  1908  (Scribner). 
A  Motor-Flight  Through  France,  1908  (Scribner). 
Artemis  to  Actaeon,  1909  (Scribner). 

II.    CRITICAL   ESTIMATES,   ETC. 

Academy,  "  Edith  Wharton  as  a  Writer,"  61,  73. 
Book  Buyer,  "  Edith  Wharton:  Her  Use  of  Epigram," 
18,  395. 


376  BIBLIOGRAPHY 

D wight,  H.  G.,  "  The  Work  of  Mrs.  Wharton,"  Put 
nam's,  3,  590. 

Nation,  "  The  Fruit  of  the  Tree  and  Ibsen's  Rosmers- 
holm,"  85,  514. 

Sedgwick,  H.  D.,  "  The  Novels  of  Mrs.  Wharton," 
Atlantic,  89,  217. 

Sholl,  A.  M.,  "  The  Work  of  Edith  Wharton,"  Gun- 
ton's,  25,  426. 

Waldstein,  Prof.  Charles,  "  Social  Ideals,"  North 
Amer.  Rev.,  182,  840. 

III.    SEPARATE  REVIEWS 

Crucial  Instances,  reviewed,  Athenceum,  '01,  2,  186. 
The  Descent  of  Man,  reviewed,  Academy,  67,   163; 

Athenceum,  '04,  2,  13;  R.  Pyke,  Bookman,  19,  512; 

O.  H.  Dunbar,  Critic,  45,  127;  Indep.,  56,  1334; 

Reader,  4,  226;  Scribner,  35,  313. 
The  Fruit  of  the  Tree,  reviewed,  Athenceum,  '07,  2, 

762;  Current  Lit.,  43,  691;  Nation,  85,  352;  Id., 

ib.,  514. 
The  Greater  Inclination,  reviewed,  Academy,  57,  40; 

A.  Gorren,  Critic,  37,  173. 

The  Hermit  and  the   Wild   Woman,  reviewed,  Athe 
nceum,  '08,  2,  — . 
The  House  of  Mirth,  reviewed,  Academy,  69,  1155; 

Athenceum,  '05,  2,  718;  Current  Lit.,  39,  689. 
Madame  de   Treymes,  reviewed,  Academy,  72,  465; 

Athenceum,  '07,  1,  535;  H.  J.  Smith,  Atlantic,  100, 

131;  Mary  Moss,  Bookman,  25,  303;  Cur.  Lit.,  42, 

693;  Indep.,  62,  1528;  Lit.  Dig.,  34,  640;  Nation, 

84,  313;  O.  H.  Dunbar,  North  Amer.,  185,  218; 

Outlook,  86,  255;  Putnam's,  2,  6l6;  Rev.  of  Rev., 

35,  764;  Spectator,  89,  764. 
Sanctuary,  reviewed,  Athenceum,  'OS,  2,  750;  Aline 

Gorren,  Critic,  44,  269;  W.  M.  Payne,  Dial,  36, 

118 1  Nation,  77,  507. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY  377 

Tales  of  Men  and  Ghosts,  reviewed,  Independent,  69, 
1089;  Nation,  91,  496. 

Valley  of  Decision,  reviewed,  Athenaeum,  '02,  1,  748; 
H.  W.  Boynton,  Atlantic,  89,  710;  G.  Hall,  Book 
Buyer,  24,  196;  Cath.  World,  75,  422;  A.  Gorren, 
Critic,  40,  541 ;  F.  J.  Mather,  Jr.,  Forum,  34,  78. 

KATE  DOUGLAS  WIGGIN 

I.    PUBLISHED  WORKS 

The     Birds'     Christmas     Carol,     1888     (Houghton, 

Mifflin). 

The  Story  of  Patsy,  1889  (Houghton,  Mifflin). 
A  Summer  in  a  Canon,  1889  (Houghton,  Mifflin). 
Timothy's  Quest,  1890  (Houghton,  Mifflin). 
A  Cathedral  Courtship,  1893  (Houghton,  Mifflin). 
Penelope's    English    Experiences,    1893    (Houghton, 

Mifflin). 

Polly  Oliver's  Problem,  1893  (Houghton,  Mifflin). 
The  Village  Watch  Tower,  1895  (Houghton,  Mifflin). 
Nine    Love   Songs    and   a    Carol,    1896    (Houghton, 

Mifflin). 

Marm  Lisa,  1896  (Houghton,  Mifflin). 
Penelope's  Progress,  1898  (Houghton,  Mifflin). 
Penelope's  Experiences  in  Ireland,  1901   (Houghton, 

Mifflin). 

The  Diary  of  a  Goose  Girl,  1902  (Houghton,  Mifflin). 
Rebecca    of    Sunnybrook    Farm,    1903     (Houghton, 

Mifflin). 

Rose  o'  the  River,  1905  (Houghton,  Mifflin). 
New  Chronicles  of  Rebecca,  1907  (Houghton,  Mifflin). 
The  Old  Peabody  Pew,  1907  (Houghton,  Mifflin). 
Susanna  and  Sue,  1909  (Houghton,  Mifflin). 

(In  Collaboration  with  MARY  FINDLATER 
and  Others) 

The  Affair  at  the  Inn,  1904  (Houghton,  Mifflin). 


378  BIBLIOGRAPHY 

(In  Collaboration  with  NORA  ARCHIBALD  SMITH) 
The  Story  Hour,  1890  (Houghton,  Mifflin). 
Children's  Rights,  1892  (Houghton,  Mifflin). 
Froebel's  Gifts,  1895  (Houghton,  Mifflin). 
Froebel's  Occupations,  1896  (Houghton,  Mifflin). 
Kindergarten  Principles  and  Practice,  1896  (Hough- 
ton,  Mifflin). 
(Edited)  Golden  Numbers,  1902  (McClure). 

The  Posy  Ring,  1903  (McClure). 

The  Fairy  Ring,  1907  (McClure). 

Magic  Casements,  1907  (McClure). 

Tales  of  Laughter,  1908  (McClure). 

Tales  of  Wonder,  1909  (Doubleday). 

II.    CRITICAL   ESTIMATES,   ETC. 

Book  Buyer,  "  Kate  Douglas  Wiggin,"  8,  285. 
Current  Literature,  Sketch  of  Kate  Douglas  Wiggin, 

30,  277. 
Gibson,  Ashley,  "  Kate  Douglas  Wiggin,"  Bookman 

(London),  39,  365. 
Hutton,  L.,  Article  based  on  Penelope's  Experiences, 

Book  Buyer,  21,  371. 
Shaw,  A.  M.,  "  Kate  Douglas  Wiggin  as  She  Really 

Is,"  Ladies'  Home  Journal,  22,  5,  6,  55. 
Van  Westrum,  A.  S.,  Interview  with  Kate  Douglas 

Wiggin,  Lamp,  29,  585. 

III.    SEPARATE   REVIEWS 

A  Cathedral  Courtship,  reviewed,  Academy,  44,  207. 

The  Affair  at  the  Inn,  reviewed,  E.  C.  Marsh,  Book 
man,  20,  374;  Reader,  4>,  722. 

The  Diary  of  a  Goose  Girl,  reviewed,  H.  W.  Boynton, 
Atlantic,  90,  276;  Athenceum,  '02,  2,  31. 

Marm  Lisa,  reviewed,  Spectator,  78,  446. 

Nero  Chronicles  of  Rebecca,  reviewed,  Academy,  73, 
848;  Athenaeum,  '07,  2,  179;  Nation,  84,  362. 

Rebecca,  reviewed,  Critic,  43,  570;  Spectator,  91,  873. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY  379 

Rose  o'  the  River,  reviewed,  Academy,  69}  1008; 
Athenceum,  '05,  2,  642;  Critic,  47,  579;  Current 
Lit.,  40,  110;  Nation,  81,  488. 


OWEN  WISTER 

I.    PUBLISHED   WORKS 

The  Dragon  of  Wantley—His  Tail,  1892   (Lippin- 

cott). 

Red  Men  and  White,  1896  (Harper). 
Lin  McLean,  1898  (Harper). 
The  Jimmyjohn  Boss,  1900  (Harper). 
U.  S.  Grant;  A  Biography,  1901  (Small,  Maynard). 
The  Virginian,  1902  (Macmillan). 
Philosophy  Four,  1903  (Macmillan). 
A  Journey  in  Search  of  Christmas,  1904  (Harper). 
Lady  Baltimore,  1906   (Macmillan). 
The  Simple  Spelling  Bee,  1907  (Macmillan). 
Mother,  1907  (Dodd,  Mead). 

The  Seven  Ages  of  Washington,  1907  (Macmillan). 
Members  of  the  Family,  IQll  (Macmillan). 

II.    CRITICAL    ESTIMATES,   ETC. 

Book  Buyer,  Sketch  of  Wister,  25,  199. 
Book  News,  Sketch  of  Wister,  16,  534. 
Marsh,  E.  C.,  "  Representative  American  Story  Tell 
ers:  Owen  Wister,"  Bookman,  27,  458. 
Warner's  Library,  "  Owen  Wister,"  27,  16101. 
World's  Work,  "  Owen  Wister/'  5,  3133. 

III.    SEPARATE  REVIEWS 

The  Jimmyjohn  Boss,  reviewed,  A.  S.  Van  Westrum, 
Book  Buyer,  20,  404. 


380  BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Lady  Baltimore,  reviewed,  Athenceum,   '06,   1,   603; 
Critic,  48,  509;  Current  Lit.,  40,  673;  Nation,  82, 

389- 

Lin  McLean,  reviewed,  Spectator,  80,  309- 
Members  of  the  Family,  reviewed,  Independent,  70, 

1224;  Spectator,  107,  28. 

Philosophy  Four,  reviewed,  Athenceum,  '03,  1,  716. 
The  Virginian,  reviewed,  Athenceum,  '02,  2,  182;  H. 

W.   Boynton,  Atlantic,  90,  277;   H.   Lears,  Book 

Buyer,  25,  250;  B.  Stark,  Bookman,  15,  569;  F.  J. 

Mather,  Jr.,  Forum,  34,   223;   World's   Work,  5, 

2792. 


INDEX 


Academy,  The,  (London), 
161 

Aiglon,  L',  213 

Ainslee's    Magazine,    229 

Alcott,  Louisa  M.,  41 

Allen,  James  Lane,  266 

Ambassadors,  The,  (James), 
270 

Anatomy  of  Melancholy, 
The,  230 

Ancestors  (Atherton),  90, 
253,  257,  260,  261,  264 

Annunzio,  Gabriele  d',  22, 
320,  337 

April  Hopes   (Howells),  14 

Arabian  Nights,  The,  32, 
230,  233 

Argent,  L',  (Zola),  119,  156 

Aristocrats,  The,  (Ather 
ton),  246 

Aristophanes,    343 

Art  of  Fiction,  The, 
(James),  298 

Ashes  of  Empire  (Cham 
bers),  78,  80 

Assommoir,  L',  (Zola),  18, 
119,  156,  159 

Atherton,  Gertrude,  90,  191, 
245-264 

Balzac,  Honor6  de,  8,  115, 
286 

Bashkirtseff,   Marie,  338 

Battleground,  The,  (Glas 
gow),  94-96 

B  eautif  ul  Lady,  The, 
(Tarkington),  215-216 


Bernhardt,  Sarah,  213 
Bete  Humaine,  La,  (Zola), 

315 

Bierce,    Ambrose,    331-353 
B  i  r  d  s'  Christmas  Carol, 

The,  (Wiggin),  37 
Black,  William,  14,  25,  47 
Black  Beetles  in  Amber 

(Bierce),  339 
Blix    (Norris),    313,    320, 

321 
Book    of   Snobs,    The, 

(Thackeray),    32 
Bookman,   The,  Pref.  vii, 
Bookman,    The,    (London), 

32 
Bourget,     Paul,     140,     154, 

337 

Brown,  George  Douglas,  320 
Bunner,  Henry  Cuyler,  231 
Burton,  230 

Cabbages  and  Kings 
(Henry),  226,  229,  236 

Cable,  George  W.,  266 

Calif  ornians,  The,  (Ather 
ton),  253,  255,  264 

Camoens,  337 

Can  Such  Things  Be? 
(Bierce),  346 

Carmen  (Merim£e),  270 

Celebrity,  The,  (Churchill), 
54,  57 

Chambers,  Robert  W.,  68- 
89 

Chartreuse  de  Parmc,  La, 
(Stendhal),  185,  347 


381 


382 


INDEX 


Cherry  (Tarkington),  196, 
197,  207-208 

Christmas  Carol,  The, 
(Dickens),  33 

Chronicle,  The,  (San  Fran 
cisco),  304 

Churchill,  Winston,  48-67, 
296 

Cigarette  Maker's  Ro 
mance,  A,  (Crawford),  9, 
13,  19-21 

Colomba  (Merime'e),  270 

Comedie  Humaine,  La,  115 

Common  Lot,  The,  (Her- 
rick),  142,  149,  150,  155 

C onist  on  (Churchill),  57, 
61-64 

Conquest  of  Canaan,  The, 
(Tarkington),  216-219 

Coquelin,  213 

Corleone   (Crawford),  16 

Cost,  The,  (Phillips),  125 

"Courtship  of  Dinah 
Shadd,  The,"  (Kipling), 
240 

"Coward,  A,"  (Wharton), 
172 

Crawford,  Francis  Marion, 
1-26,  55,  271,  298,  305,  321 

Crisis  The,  (Churchill),  55, 
57,  61 

Crossing,  The,  (Churchill), 
55,  56,  57,  59-61,  62 

Crucial  Instances  (Whar 
ton),  179 

Cynic's  Word  Book,  The, 
(Bierce),  332 

Danger  Mark,  The,  (Church 
ill),  83,  84,  85 

Dante,  337 

Daudet,  Alphonse,  286 

"Daunt  Diana,  The," 
(Wharton),  170,  174,  180 

Davis,  Richard  Harding, 
79 


"Deal  in  Cotton,  A,"  (Kip 
ling),  240 

"Deal  in  Wheat,  A,"  (Nor- 
ris),  316 

"Death  of  Halpin  Fray- 
ser,  The,"  (Bierce),  352 

Deliverance,  The,  (Glas 
gow),  91,  94,  96-98 

Descent  of  Man,  The, 
(Wharton),  179,  180 

Devil's  Dictionary,  The, 
(Bierce),  332,  344 

Dickens,  Charles,  51,  231, 
309 

"Dilettante,  The,"  (Whar 
ton),  177 

Docteur  Pascal,  Le,  (Zola), 
302 

Dr.  Claudius,  (Crawford), 
12 

Doll's  House,  A,  (Ibsen), 
120,  141 

Don  Orsino  (Crawford),  13, 
18 

Don  Quixote,  32 

Dreiser,  Theodore,  296 

"  Drums  of  the  Fore-and- 
Aft,  The,"  (Kipling),  240 

Dumas,   Alexandre,  59 

Dunciad,  The,  343 

Egoist,  The,  (Meredith), 
287 

Eliot,  George,  105 

Epic  of  the  Wheat,  The, 
(Norris),  155,  310,  323 

Evening  Post,  The,  (Chi 
cago),  232 

Evening  Sun,  The,  (New 
York),  304 

"Expiation"  (W  h  a  r- 
ton),  170 

Fair  Margaret  (Craw 
ford),  13 


INDEX 


383 


Fashionable  Adven 
tures  of  Joshua  Craig, 
The,  (Phillips),  131-133 

Fecondite  (Zola),  160,  302, 
303 

Fielding,  Henry,  51,  286 

F  ightin  g  Chance,  The, 
(Chambers),  83,  84,  85, 
86,  8T,  88 

Firing  Line,  The,  (C  h  a  m- 
bers),  83,  84 

Flaubert,  Gustave,  234,  286, 
337 

Ford,  Paul  Leicester,  57 

Forty  Thieves,  The,  33 

Four  Million,  The,  (Henry), 
230 

France,  Anatole,  244 

Froebel's  Gifts  (Wiggin), 
36 

"From  the  Main  Top" 
(Robertson),  350 

Fruit  of  the  Tree,  The, 
(Wharton),  189-192 

"Full  Circle"  (Wharton), 
170 

Gald&s,  Perez,  337 
Gentleman     from     Indiana, 

The,     (Tarkington),     196, 

197,  198,  199-204,  208,  296 
Germinal  (Zola),  302 
Gibson,  Charles  Dana,  68 
"Gift    Horse,    The,"    (Wis- 

ter),  292-293 
Gissing,  George,   232 
Glasgow,  Ellen,  90-111,  250 
Golden      Bowl,      The, 

(James),  336 
Golden    Fleece     (Phil- 

lips),  125 
Gospel    of    Freedom,    The, 

(Herrick),   140,   142,   143- 

146,  147,  155,  296,  297 
Grant,  Robert,  155 


Great  God,  Success,  The, 
(Phillips),  125 

"Great  Men's  Sons"  (Tar 
kington),  213-215 

Greater  Inclination,  The, 
(Wharton),  168,  176,  296 

Guest  of  Quesney,  The, 
(Tarkington),  219-222 

"  Habitation  Enforced, 
An,"  (Kipling),  240 

Hackett,  Francis,  232 

"  Happy-Teeth  "  (Wister), 
291 

Hardy,  Thomas,  105,  302, 
303,  337 

Hedda  Gabler  (Ibsen),  141, 
143 

Heimath  (Sudermann),  143 

"Henry,  O."  (Sidney  Por 
ter),  225-244,  345 

Herrick,  Robert,  57,  91,  115, 
136,  140-167,  250,  296 

Hewlett,  Maurice,  337 

Honorable  Peter  Stirling, 
The,  (Ford),  57 

Horace,  343 

"Horseman  in  the  Sky,  A," 
(Bierce),  347 

Horton,  George,  296 

House  of  Mirth,  The, 
(Wharton),  90,  168,  174, 
189,  192-194,  297 

House  with  the  Green  Shut 
ters,  The,  (Douglas),  320 

Howells,  William  Dean,  11, 
14,  269,  271,  309,  338 

Hungry  Heart  The,  (Phil 
lips),  120,  133-136 

Husband's  Story,  The,  (Phil 
lips),  119,  120,  124,  133, 
136-139 

Hutton,  Laurence,  43 

Ibsen,  Henrik,  143 
Ingersoll,  Robert,  342 


884. 


INDEX 


Innocent*  Abroad   (Twain), 

81 
In  the  Arena  (Tarkington), 

211-215 
"In    the    Back"    (Wister), 

291 
In  the  Quarter  (Chambers), 

69,  75 
"  In  Trust "  (Wharton),  173 

James,  Henry,  22,  154,  270, 
286,  287,  288,  298,  336,  337 

Jerome,  Jerome  K.,  43 

Jimmy  John  Boss,  The,  (Wis 
ter),  273 

"Journey,  A,"  (Wharton), 
177 

"Jug  of  Syrup,  A," 
(Bierce),  350 

Juvenal,  343 

Katharine  L  auder~ 
dale  (Crawford),  13 

Khaled  (Crawford),  12 

Kim  (Kipling),  275,  336 

Kindergarten  Principles  and 
Practice  (Wiggin),  36 

K  ing  in  Yellow,  The, 
(Chambers),  69,  76 

Kipling,  Rudyard,  11,  225, 
239,  249,  267,  275,  336,  337, 
345 

Kreutzer  Sonata,  The,  (Tol 
stoy),  160 

Kubla  Khan,  352 

Lady  Baltimore  (Wister), 
266,  285-291,  294 

Lane,  230 

"Last  Asset,  The,"  (Whar 
ton),  174 

"Legend,  The,"  (Wharton), 
170 

"Letters,  The,"  (Wharton), 
169,  170,  181 


Life,  69 

Life  for  a  Life,  A,   (Her- 

rick),  142,  143,  160-167 
Light-Finger ed        Gentry 

(Phillips),  113 
Little  Women  (Alcott),  41 
London,  Jack,  296,  345 
Long,  Straight  Road,  The, 

(Horton),  296 
Lorraine  (Chambers),  78 

Madame  d  e  T  r  ey  m  e  s 
(Wharton),  168,  175,  189, 
194-195 

Madcap   Violet   (Black),  14 

Madeleine  Ferat  (Zola),  126 

Mag  da  (Sudermann),  141 

Mahomet,  Life  of,  (Irving), 
32 

Maids  of  Paradise  (Cham 
bers),  78 

Maker  of  Moons,  The, 
(Chambers),  76,  77 

Man  from  Home,  The,  (Tar 
kington),  223 

Man's  Woman,  A,  (Nor- 
ris),  304,  312,  313,  321, 
322 

"  Man  Who  Would  be  King, 
The,"  (Kipling),  240 

Marble  Faun,  The,  (Haw 
thorne),  47 

Marsh,  Edward  Clark,  286, 
287 

Martyrs  of  Spain,  The,  32 

Marzio's  Crucifix  (Craw- 
ford),  12 

Maupassant,  Guy  de,  140, 
175,  234,  272,  273,  298,  335, 
337 

Maurice,  Arthur  Bartlett, 
197 

McTeague  (Norris),  309, 
318,  320,  327 

Members  of  the  Family 
(Wister),  269,  291 


INDEX 


385 


Memoirs  of  an  American 

Citizen,     The,     (Herrick), 

136,  142,  150-152 
"  Memorandum    of    Sudden 

Death,  A,"  (Norris),  317 
Meredith,  George,  286,  287, 

337 

M6rimee,  Prosper,  269,  270 
Merrick,  Leonard,  232 
Merriman,  Henry  Seton, 

79 
Miller  of  Old  Church,  The, 

(Glasgow),  91,  99,  104-111 
Milton,  John,  337 
"Mission    of    Jane,    The," 

(Wharton),  172 
Mr.  Crewe's  Career  (Church 
ill),  57,  64 
Mr.   Isaact    (Crawford),   2, 

7,  11,   12,  24 
Modern     Chronicle,     A 

(Churchill),  49,  54,  57,  62, 

64-67 
Monsieur   Beaucaire    (Tark- 

ington),  196,  197,  204-207, 

209,  915 
Moran   of    the    Lady    Letty 

(Norris),  312,  318,  319 
Morrison,  Arthur,  38 
"Mrs.  Bathurst"  (Kipling), 

240 
"  Mrs.  Protheroe  "  (Tarking- 

ton),  212-213 
"Moving    Finger,    T  h  e," 

(Wharton),  170 
"Moxon's  Master"  (Bierce), 

351 
"Muse's     Tragedy,     The," 

(Wharton),  169,  170,  174, 

176 
Mystery   of  Choice,  The, 

(Chambers),  76 

Nantas  (Zola),  126 
"Need     of     Money,     The," 
(Tarkington),  212 


Norris,  Frank,  Pref.  v,  91, 
115,  155,  198,  250,  295-330 

The  N  ove  I— What  It  Is 
(Crawford),  3,  298 

"  Novel  with  a  Purpose, 
The,"  (Norris),  301 

"  Occurrence  at  Owl  Creek 
Bridge,  An,"  (Bierce),  349 

Octopus,  The,  (Norris),  198, 
296,  302,  306,  310,  320,  323, 
325,  327,  329 

Old  Peabody  Pew,  The, 
(Wiggin),  42 

Old  Wives  for  New  (Phil 
lips),  114,  120,  128-131 

Oliphant,  Mrs.,  25 

Oliver  Twist  (Dickens), 
34 

"On  the  City  Wall"  (Kip 
ling),  240 

"Other  Two,  The,"  (Whar 
ton),  179 

Ouida,  185 

Outsiders  (Chambers),  81-82 

Paris  (Zola),  302,  323 

"  Parure,  La,"  (Maupas- 
sant),  231 

Patience  Sparhawk  (Ather- 
ton),  246,  253,  256 

Patsy,  The  Story  of,  (Wig- 
gin),  37 

Paul  Patoff  (Crawford),  8 

"Pelican,  The,"  (Wharton), 
178 

Pemberton,  Max,  79 

P ene  lo pe's  Experiences 
(Wiggin),  31,  36,  43-46 

Phillips,  David  Graham,  91, 
112-139,  250 

Philosophy  Four  (Wister), 
266,  278-285,  289 

Pierre  et  Jean  (Maupas 
sant),  298 

Pigs  in  Clover  (Danby),247 


386 


INDEX 


Pit,  The,  (Norris),  198,  296, 
302,  311,  317,  320,  323,  328, 
329 

Plain  Tales  from  the  Hills 
(Kipling),  269 

"Plea  for  Romantic  Fic 
tion,  A,"  (Norris),  304 

Poe,  Edgar  Allan,  337,  345 

Polly  Oliv  er's  Problem 
(Wiggin),  40 

Pope,  Alexander,  343 

Porter,  Sidney,  ("O.  Hen 
ry"),  225-244 

"Portrait,  The,"  (Wharton), 
170,  172,  174 

"Potboiler,  The,"  (Whar 
ton),  170 

"  Problem  in  Fiction,  A," 
(Norris),  299 

Quatre  JSvangiles,  Let, 
(Zola),  161,  323 

Ralstons,  The,  (Crawford), 
13 

Real  World,  The,  (Herrick), 
141,  146,  148,  155 

Rebecca  of  Sunnybrook 
Farm  (Wiggin),  30,  40,  41 

"Reckoning,  The,"  (Whar 
ton),  174 

"  Recovery,  The,"  (Whar 
ton),  170 

Red  Men  and  White  (Wis- 
ter),  272 

Red  Republic,  The,  (Cham 
bers),  78 

Rehan,  Ada,  70 

"Rembrandt,  The,"  (Whar 
ton),  170 

Repplier,  Agnes,  35 

Responsibilities  of  a  Novel 
ist,  The,  (Norris,)  298 

Richard  Carvel  (Churchill), 
49,  55,  57,  59,  61,  65,  296 

R  i  g  g  s,  Mrs.  George  C., 


(Kate    Douglas   Wiggin), 

28 

Roberts,  Charles  G.  D.,  74 
Robertson,  Morgan,  296,  350 
Rod,  Edouard,  191 
Romance   of  a   Plain  Man, 

The,  (Glasgow),  99-104 
Roman  Experimental,  L«, 

(Zola),  298 
Roman  Singer,  A,  (Craw- 

ford),  16 

Romola   (Eliot),  47,  185 
"  Rose  of  Dixie,  The,"  (Hen 
ry),  235 
"  Rose  o'  the  River  "  (W  i  g- 

gin),  42 
JB  o  u  g  o  n  -  Macquart,  L  e  s, 

(Zola),  115,  161,  310 
Rulers  of  Kings   (Ather- 

ton),  253,  257-259 

Sacrifice,  La.  (Rod),  191 
"Salt  and  Sincerity"  (Nor 
ris),  295 

Sanctuary  (Wharton),  189 
Sant'  Ilario   (Crawford),  7, 

17,   18 
Saracmesca    (Crawford),   7, 

9,  16,  17,  18 

Saturday  Review,  The,  245 
Scottish  Chiefs  (Porter),  32 
Second  Generation,  The, 

(Phillips),    114,    120,    123, 

126-128 
Senator   North    (Atherton), 

245,  253,  254,  261-263 
Shapes    of    Clay     (Bierce), 

331,  339 

Silas  Lapham  (Howells),  11 
Sister  Carrie  (Dreiser),  296 
Smith,   Nora  Archibald,  29, 

31 
"  Soapy    and    the   Anthem " 

(Henry),  236-237 
Some    Ladies   in   Haste 

(Chambers),  76 


INDEX 


387 


Son  of  the  Wolf,  The,  (Lon 
don),  296 
"Souls    Belated"    (Whar- 

ton),  170,  172,  174 
Spenders,  The,  (Wilson),  296 
Splendid  Idle  Forties,  T  h  e, 

(Atherton),  253 
Spun  Yarn  (Robertson),  296 
Stendhal,  185,  337,  347 
Stevenson,  Robert  Louis,  271 
Stirling,  George,  338 
Stowe,  Harriet  Beecher,  92, 

303 
Strange  Adventures  of  a 

Houseboat,   The,    (Black), 

47 

Sudermann,  Heinrich,  143 
Summer  in  a   Canon,  A , 

(Wiggin),  37 
Susan   (Phillips),  117 

Tales  of  Mean  Streets  (Mor 
rison),  38 

Taquisara  (Crawford),  16 

Tarkington,  Newton  Booth, 
196-224,  296 

Tasso,  Torquato,  337 

Thaddeus  of  Warsaw  (Por 
ter),  32 

Thackeray,  William  Make 
peace,  32,  51,  286 

Therese  Raquin   (Zola),  126 

"They"  (Kipling),  239 

Thirteenth  District,  The, 
(Whitlock),  57,  198,  296 

Three  Fates,  The,  (Craw 
ford),  13-16 

Three  Men  in  a  Boat  (Je 
rome),  47 

"Timberline"  (Wister),  292 

Timothy's  Quest  (Wiggin), 
30,  37,  39-40 

Title  Mart,  The  (Churchill), 
57 

Together  (Herrick),  57,  142, 
149,  154-160,  161,  167,  297 


Tolstoy,    Count    Lyof,    160, 

338,  347 
"To    Train     a    Writer" 

(Bierce),  340 
Touchstone,  The,   (W  h  a  r- 

ton),  170,  189 
Tr  e  e    of  Heaven,  The, 

(Chambers),  76 
Trimmed  Lamp,  The,  (Hen 
ry),   230,  237 
Trois    Mousquetaires,    L  e  s, 

(Dumas),  55 

Trollope,  Anthony,  25,  337 
Truth,  69 
Twain,    Mark,    (Samuel    L. 

Clemens),  31 
Tivo  Vanrevels,  The,  (T  a  r- 

kington),  196,  208-211 

Uncle  Tom's  Cabin  (Stowe), 

18,  159,  303 
Undine,  32,  33 
Unleavened  Bread  (Grant), 

155 

Valdes,     Armando     Palacio, 

337 
Valley    of    Decision,    The, 

(Wharton),  174,  183-189 
Ventre  de  Paris,  Le,  (Zola), 

119 
Venus    d'llle,    La,    (Me"ri- 

me"e),  270 
"Verdict,  The,"  (Wharton), 

170 

Verga,  Giovanni,  337 
Vergil,  337 
Vie,    U n e,    (Maupassant), 

273 
Vie  de  Boheme,  La,   (Mur- 

ger),  75 
Virginian,     The,     (Wister), 

132,  198,  266,  267,  271,  272, 

273,  274-278,  285,  286,  287, 

288,  290,  296,  297 
Vogue,  69 


388 


INDEX 


Voice  of  the  City,  The, 

(Henry),  230 
Voice  of  the  People,   The, 

(Glasgow),  94,  99-101 

Ward,  Mrs.  Humphry,  67, 
302 

Web  of  Life,  The,  (Her- 
rick),  141,  146-147 

"Wether ill,  Elizabeth,"  (Su 
san  Warner),  41 

Weyman,  Stanley  J.,  79 

Wharton,  Edith,  90,  168-195, 
296 

What  Maisie  Knew  (James), 
287 

Wheel  of  Life,  The  (Glas 
gow),  92 

White,  Stewart  Edward,  74 

White  Magic  (Phillips),  121, 
124,  133 

Whitlock, .  Brand,  57,  198, 
296 

Wide,  Wide  World,  The, 
(Warner),  41 


Wiggin,  Kate  Douglas,  27- 
47 

Wilkins-Freeman,  Mary  E., 
34,  266 

Wilson,  Harry  Leon,  223, 
296 

"Wine  of  Wizardry,  The;" 
(Stirling),  338 

Wister,  Owen,  132,  198,  265- 
294 

Witch  of  Ellangowan,  The, 
(Chambers),  69 

"Without  Benefit  of  Cler 
gy"  (Kipling),  240 

Woman  Ventures,  A,  (Phil 
lips),  125 

Younger  Set,  The,  (Cham 
bers),  83,  84 

Zola,  Emile,  5,  8,  18,  22,  115, 
119,  120,  126,  140,  156,  160, 
161,  298,  301,  302,  303,  309, 
311,  323,  337,  347 


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